Tatura RSL and Rotary club member John Dickinson started fundraising when the groups were $5000 short to pay for the mural artist and associated costs.
“I thought, we haven't done anything for 12 months . . . So we started last Friday (May 7), and we're already well on the way to collecting,” he said.
A highlight of the fundraising drive was a ‘blanket muster’ in Hogan St on Saturday.
Once completed next month, the mural will celebrate the Anzac legacy — a waterfall of remembrance poppies down one side, and a portrait of Sir John Monash on the other.
Sir John, besides being one of Australia's leaders in World War I, was also an engineer, and helped design water towers and bridges in the region.
“He had a lot to do with the irrigation in Tatura, he was instrumental in that,” Mr Dickinson said.
“He was also a founding member of the first Rotary club in Melbourne.”
Mr Dickinson said as well as telling the proud story of the Anzacs, the mural would be a big drawcard for Tatura's tourism industry.
“I was speaking to a motel owner, and he said, the amount of people who come in and say — what can we see in Tatura?" he said.
“Besides the museum, there's not much . . . but they ask, ‘do you have a mural?'
“And we say ‘no, you'll have to go to Rochester to see that’, so the reason it was so easy to raise the money is because it was a good project.
“We haven't done any fundraising for so long . . . it's easy to sell a good idea.”
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