Cairns Cenotaph

The Cairns Cenotaph stands as a tall, stark granite pillar on the edge of the Esplanade, topped by a bronze figure of a soldier with his head bowed and rifle reversed. It was unveiled in nineteen twenty-six to honor the hundreds of local men who died during the Great War. When the sculptor Gilbert Doble finished the figure, a local reporter noted that the soldier wore an expression of profound weariness rather than the usual triumphant air common to many war memorials of that era.