The stone memorial honours the 199 local men who enlisted during the First World War, including the 21 who were killed and the 7 who died on service.

In October 1910 the Tablelands railway was extended to Herberton from Cairns, assisting in making the town a focal point for the surrounding district of mineral processing and pastoral industries.

The word "cenotaph", commonly applied to war memorials at the time, literally means "empty tomb".

Many memorials honour all who served from a locality, not just the dead, providing valuable evidence of community involvement in the war.

[1] Australian war memorials are also valuable evidence of imperial and national loyalties, at the time, not seen as conflicting; the skills of local stonemasons, metalworkers and architects; and of popular taste.

[1] Many of the First World War monuments have been updated to record local involvement in later conflicts, and some have fallen victim to unsympathetic re-location and repair.

It was the most popular choice of communities responsible for erecting the memorials, embodying the ANZAC spirit and representing the qualities of the ideal Australian: loyalty, courage, youth, innocence and masculinity.

The digger was a phenomenon peculiar to Queensland, perhaps due to the fact that other states had followed Britain's lead and established Advisory Boards made up of architects and artists, prior to the erection of war memorials.

The digger statue was not highly regarded by artists and architects who were involved in the design of relatively few Queensland memorials.

A square recessed marble pillar projects from the base and bears the leaded names of the 199 local men who served in the First World War, including the 21 fallen and the 7 who died on service.

War Memorials are important in demonstrating the pattern of Queensland's history as they are representative of a recurrent theme that involved most communities throughout the state.

[1] Unveiled in the early 1920s, the memorial at Herberton demonstrates the principal characteristics of a commemorative structure erected as an enduring record of a major historical event.

As a digger statue it is representative of the most popular form of memorial in Queensland[1] The place is important because of its aesthetic significance.

It is an uncommon example of a memorial still located in its original surrounds and has aesthetic value both as a dominant landmark and for its high degree of workmanship and design.