1939–46: First fourteen busts In 1926, the
Ballarat-born politician
Richard Crouch (1868–1949) began a lengthy series of donations to the city's institutions and sporting clubs. In June 1939, Crouch pledged £1000 to create life-sized
busts of the twelve
prime ministers of Australia. These busts would placed in what would be renamed the Prime Ministers Avenue, the "
Horse Chestnut Walk" from the begonia house to the southern end of the
Ballarat Botanical Gardens. Crouch felt that Ballarat suited such a memorial as it was once considered for federal capital. The Australian sculptor
Wallace Anderson was commissioned for eleven busts;
Stanley Bruce's was prepared in
London. In June 1939, Anderson invited Menzies and former prime ministers to sit down for him, which would take around four to five hours each. he also sought their relatives' approval with the likeness. He moulded clay models with head-shaped
armatures, and then used them to create plaster
moulds and
casts. From the plaster casts he made wax casts from gelatine moulds. The wax casts were then sent to
Melbourne to be cast in bronze, The finished busts are mounted on plain granite bases and polished Harcourt granite pedestals. during his first visit to Ballarat. T. W. Cotton substituted for the unwell Crouch. It took two more years for Anderson to complete all the busts. In late 1941, he was still working on the twelfth prime minister,
Robert Menzies, with an empty pedestal already in place at the Avenue. In October, Crouch paid £1000 in a
government bond to the council. The council became trustees of the interest, which would be accumulated in a savings account to pay for new busts. Anderson finally completed the Menzies bust in September 1943 and it was installed the following month. When Menzies first saw the bust, he laughed and did not recognize himself, but conceded his praise to Anderson as he had never sat for him. On 26 January 1944, it was discovered that the busts of
Andrew Fisher and
W. M. Hughes had been stolen from their pedestals. This was the first interference with the Avenue since its institution. They were recovered undamaged the next month, Fisher's at the
George V statue on
Sturt Street and Hughes' at the Ballarat Soldiers' Convalescent Depot. The theft was believed to be a joke. Following another £1000 donation from Crouch, Anderson sculpted the busts of prime ministers
Arthur Fadden and
John Curtin. They were added to the Prime Ministers Avenue in March 1946.
1946–83: Forde to Fraser The creator of
Frank Forde's bust is unknown. In September 1946,
Ben Chifley sat down for twenty-year-old Ballarat Arts School student Ken Palmer, who modeled Chiefly's bust for the Prime Ministers Avenue. This was the first time Chiefly had accepted a request for him to sit for an artist. Both Chifley and his private secretary N. M. Tyrell expressed their approval of the likeness. The bust was completed in October 1947. A replica mounted on a sandstone pedestal was later displayed at
Bathurst's memorial to Chifley. Crouch died on 7 April 1949. In 1952, photographer Ernest Shea compared the Prime Ministers Avenue to "a line of skeletons sticking their heads up out of the ground." When Robert Menzies visited Ballarat in March 1956 to open the
Ballarat Begonia Festival, he reportedly concurred with comments that his bust was not a good likeness and that "it would be a good thing if the busts were removed". Residents flatly refused to remove Menzies' bust. The busts of
Harold Holt,
John McEwen,
John Gorton,
William McMahon and
Gough Whitlam were created by
Victor Greenhalgh, best known for his large statue of
George V which dominates the
Sturt Street plantation in Ballarat. Greenhalgh was commissioned to create eight of the busts; originally, Greenhalgh also created
Malcolm Fraser's bust. However, Greenhalgh and others were critical of the final casting.
1983–2014: Fraser replacement, and Hawke to Gillard and thefts Following Greenhalgh's death in 1983,
Peter Nicholson (best known for his cartoons in the
Nation Review,
Financial Review and
The Age) was asked to create a new bust for Fraser, which was completed after the bust of Fraser's successor
Bob Hawke had been installed. The busts of
Malcolm Fraser,
Bob Hawke,
Paul Keating,
John Howard,
Kevin Rudd and
Julia Gillard were created by
Peter Nicholson. Nicholson's works have followed his philosophy that the busts should impart an expression of the character of the individual. He believes that Howard was dissatisfied with the size of his lower lip, and it is said that Keating was unhappy with his bust's weak chin and pointy nose. Nicholson has since supplied moulds of all seven of his sculptures to Ballarat council so that they can be recast in the instance of damage or theft. and in April 1995, the busts of
Joseph Cook,
Joseph Lyons and Gorton were stolen. The busts of Chiefly and Fisher were pulled over and others were knocked down; damage amounted to around $20,000. Gillard's bust was erected in the Avenue in 2014, using up the last of the funds bequeathed by Crouch. In 2018, the city's director of development and planning confirmed that enough funding had been allocated for the Avenue through the public arts program. In 2018, the combined cost of one bust and its plinth was around $50,000. In 2017, Abbott's bust was draped with a crown of onions, likely a reference to when he was
filmed eating a raw onion. Upon Hawke's death in 2019, flowers were laid around his bust. In the early hours of 13 June 2020, the busts of Abbott and Howard were spray-painted with words
ABC News described as "obscene". The bust of
Malcolm Turnbull was also created by Klarfeld and was commissioned using funding from the
City of Ballarat's Public Art Program. Turnbull attended the unveiling in November 2022.
2025–present: Vandalism On 23 January 2025, a group of four vandals arrived in the southern part of the gardens in a silver
ute at 1.23 am and damaged twenty of the busts in an act of vandalism. This entailed the removal and subsequent theft of the heads of the busts of former Labor leaders Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd with an
angle grinder and the covering of the remaining statues' nameplates with
spray paint including red crosses. Political rhetoric including the words "the
Commonwealth will fall" was also later found at the scene. The vandals left 24 minutes later. Damage was estimated at $140,000; the busts were covered in black plastic and cordoned off by temporary fencing. Nicholson described the damage as "upsetting for me and also for Ballarat". Liberal leader
Peter Dutton responded that people should have "great respect for our former prime ministers, regardless of if they are Liberal or Labor." ==Gallery==