Chinchilla Digger Statue
heritage-listed memorial
The Digger Statue is a heritage-listed memorial at 57 Heeney Street, Chinchilla, Western Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Andrew Lang Petrie and built in 1919 by A L Petrie & Son. It is also known as the Chinchilla WWI Memorial and Chinchilla Soldier Statue. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 August 1999.
History
The Chinchilla digger statue was erected as part of the Chinchilla War Memorial, unveiled on 30 January 1919 by the Governor of Queensland, Sir Hamilton John Goold-Adams, GCMG, CB. The memorial was designed and executed by the well-known monumental masonry firm of AL Petrie of Toowong, Brisbane. In 1977 the statue was removed from its original position and separated from its pedestal and base. Part of the pedestal was re-erected in Fuller Place in Heeney Street in 1979, surmounted by a spire; while the statue was kept in storage until re-erected in front of the Returned Services League of Australia (RSL) hall further south on Heeney Street in 1992.
The Chinchilla district, on the northern Darling Downs, had been opened to non-indigenous settlement following explorer Ludwig Leichhardt's journey through this area in late 1844. Pastoral runs (both sheep and cattle) were taken up in the second half of the 1840s, including Matthew Goggs' Chinchilla run (by 1848). At Charley's Creek, on the main dray route from Toowoomba to western Queensland, teamsters regularly camped, and by late 1876 a small township of three hotels, three stores and two butcher shops had been established there.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23018868. Authority coordinates are -26.742, 150.623. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1999, 1977 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinchilla Digger Statue” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.