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Seymour Light Horse Memorial Park

Other Name

OLD ARMY CAMP

Location

GOULBURN VALLEY HIGHWAY SEYMOUR, Mitchell Shire

File Number

Original Hermes No: 14271

Level

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14271 Seymour Light Horse Park
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14271 Seymour Light Horse Park

Statement of Significance

The Australian Light Horse Memorial Park, Seymour, is 130 hectares of regenerating Box-Ironbark woodland and part of the former Seymour Camp, a Commonwealth military training camp established at the outbreak of WWI. The Australian Light Horse Memorial Park officially opened in 2001 and incorporates only the western portion of the original 320 ha of the Seymour Camp which, prior to the opening of Puckapunyal Army Camp north of Seymour in 1939, was Victoria's foremost military training camp. Following this the camp became known as the Old Seymour Camp and during WWII continued to be used for the training of militia and Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) and after the war for compulsory military training in the 1950s. The camp closed in 1978.

The Australian Light Horse Memorial Park has local historical significance being a part of the Old Seymour Camp, one of a number of twentieth century military sites in the Seymour area. In 1910 Lord Kitchner recommended the Seymour area as a mobilisation point for Victorian troops of the AIF because of its proximity to Melbourne, suitable terrain and the available railway transport. Along with the Old Seymour Camp, sites in the Seymour area associated with the mobilisation of troops over the twentieth century include Mob Siding, constructed following World War I as the mobilisation stores for the Old Seymour Camp, Puckpunyal Army Camp and the Mangalore Ammunition Depot and Dysart Siding constructed to service Puckapunyal along with several rifle ranges and a number other small camps established during World War II.

In the Australian Light Horse Memorial Park this military history is reflected in archaeological features that date primarily to World War II and consist of discrete clusters of the concrete foundations of buildings and ablution blocks of the former Camp 20A and 20B and a military hospital along with the sealed roadways connecting the former camps. The only remaining standing structure is the filtration tank for the camp sewerage system. Although from 1887 the Seymour Troop of the Victorian Mounted Rifles and following Federation, the Seymour Troop of the Australian Light Horse trained in the area where the Seymour Camp was later established, no tangible evidence of this early military history survives in the park although two large concrete horse troughs on the Goulburn Valley Highway outside the park are associated with this early period. Throughout the camp's history much of the accommodation was in tents, leaving little or no physical evidence.

The Light Horse Memorial Park has local social significance as a place of recreation and community involvement especially in efforts to regenerate the box-iron bark bushland and in the development of the site as a Memorial Park. The Park is also of social significance as a place of commemoration for individuals who underwent military training in the Old Seymour Camp.

The Australian Light Horse Memorial Park has local historical and social significance in contributing to an understanding of the role of Seymour in Victorian military history. The Australian Light Horse Memorial Park has been included as an archaeological site on the Victorian Heritage Inventory and should be considered by Mitchell Shire for inclusion in the heritage overlay of the local planning scheme.

Group

Military