Departed Great Men

The Sydney Morning Herald

26 June 1909

Sir,

I have read with much interest the leading article in your issue of the 15th inst, in which, under the heading of "Departed Great Men," reference is made to the greatest Australian explore, Hamilton Hume, as "worth while not to forget. "

In the same issue another article appears under Hume's name, and it is mentioned that "at a recently held meeting to celebrate the jubilee of Albury it was suggested that the present was an opportune occasion to arrange for the commemoration of the great work done by him and that a bronze or marble statue should be erected to his memory in the centre of the town of Albury."

May I, as an admirer of Hamilton Hume, be permitted to suggest that the most appropriate and fitting method of doing honour to his memory would be to restore to the grandest of our Australian rivers the name by which he called it, in honour of his father Commissary-General, Andrew Hamilton Hume, when he discovered the river on November 16, 1824.

And, further, that an obelisk be erected in the town of Albury, bearing a record "that this river, from its source to its junction with the Murrumbidgee, shall for all time be known by the name of the Hume River."

This would stand as an eternal and fitting appreciation of the work of the great explorer, and would serve throughout future generations to keep his memory green, "lest we forget."

I am, etc., A. C. Macdonald. Melbourne, June 22.