and flourished for several decades before these mines became uneconomical. Rural Victoria was hit particularly by the depression and drought of the 1890s. From 1895 the larger mines in the Avoca district closed and at the outbreak of World War I very few companies were still in operation. The downturn also affected agriculture in general with the last vineyard ceasing activity in 1929. Across Australia rural productivity was rising, partly through the development of agricultural machinery by implement makers such as Mackay and Shearer. Some rural areas in 1901 recorded five times the harvest yields of the 1890s, at a small fraction of the cost. In the first decade of the twentieth century Avoca's infrastructure was further developed. More and better roads were being built, the Shire Engineer attributed the problem of bad roads to heavier traffic from increased cultivation of land and more produce being brought to market. In 1911 the Sugarloaf reservoir was opened, and in the same year the district was linked to the rest of the State by telephone. The Avoca Magistrates' Court closed on 1 April 1979, not having been visited by a Magistrate since 1971. The town today Avoca Soldiers' Memorial The Avoca Soldiers' Memorial is prominent in the park in the centre of the High Street. The war memorial often features on souvenirs of Avoca and could be said to be the symbol of the town. The memorial was built in 1921. Since early in the First World War there had been a desire in the community to honour the men from the district who had enlisted. Finally in 1920 it was decided to hold a "Back to Avoca" celebration the next year and for the memorial to be opened at this time. The memorial cost £1,100. Most monuments in Victoria and New South Wales cost between £100 and £1000, one in five between £1000 and £2000, and a few more than that. (It has been estimated that £100 in the 1920s was roughly equivalent to A$8000 in 1998.) Avoca, too small to be allocated a gun for a war trophy, built a monument on a scale suitable for the largest twenty per cent of communities. Having not built a band rotunda to date, it appears that the community may have used the opportunity of erecting the memorial to overcome this deficiency in the town's furnishings. The Avoca memorial, which was initially conceived