Smithfield Pioneers Monument

A three-metre high stone memorial cairn on the northern side of the Kennedy Highway at Smithfield, which commemorates the Anglo-Australian explorers and pioneers who discovered a route to Trinity Bay between June and October 1876 as an outlet for the Hodgkinson goldfields.

Transcript of the inscription on the Smithfield Pioneers Monument
Kennedy Highway, Smithfield, 1956.

In 1956, local historian Glenville Pike proposed that a memorial should be erected at Smithfield to commemorate ‘the men who blazed the track’ in 1876. Mulgrave Shire Council and the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia built the monument at the foot of the Macalister Range next to the Kennedy Highway. Pike wrote the inscription, which was inspired by Will Ogilvie’s poem, and the language he used is a reminder of contemporary attitudes from the Menzies era towards the contribution of male explorers and pioneers to the process of colonial expansion.

The monument was unveiled on 9 June 1956 by Daisy Hine, John Doyle’s daughter.