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Australian War Memorials: A Nation Reimagined

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The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914

Abstract

Since the end of the First World War, the war memorial has become a ubiquitous presence in the Australian commemorative landscape. Serving initially as sites of personal and communal grief and a focus for those intent on nation building, they have proved to be remarkably durable symbols of national identity and communal memory. Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall (2015) and the Australian Peacekeeping Memorial (2017) are recent additions, ones that seek to respectively recognise the military service of Indigenous Australians and peacekeepers. Both represent a challenge to orthodoxy, the former in subject matter and the latter in style. Yet their capacity to disrupt conventional wisdom is as yet untested. Both may well be subsumed into the broader military narrative that elevates the original Anzacs to the status of founding fathers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (London: Yale University Press, 1993).

  2. 2.

    Yininmadyemi(‘Thou Didst Let Fall’) is taken from an indigenous language of Sydney. The translation of the word was recorded by Second Lieutenant William Dawes, an officer who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788.

  3. 3.

    John Stephens, “Recent Directions in War Memorial Design,” The International Journal of the Humanities 9, no. 6 (2012). http://www.Humanities-Journal.com.

  4. 4.

    Michael Hedger, Public Sculpture in Australia (Roseville East, NSW: Craftsman, 1995), 27.

  5. 5.

    Alan Borg, War Memorials from Antiquity to the Present (London: Leo Cooper, 1991), xii.

  6. 6.

    David Stephens, Anzac and Anzackery: Useful future or sentimental dream. In The Honest History Book, edited by David Stephens and Alison Broinowski, 120–133. Sydney, NSW: New South Publishing.

  7. 7.

    Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013).

  8. 8.

    Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 224.

  9. 9.

    Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996), 45.

  10. 10.

    Michael Scheib, “A history of Australia’s official war art scheme of the First World War,” (PhD thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015).

  11. 11.

    Winter, Sites, 53.

  12. 12.

    Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 37. It would have been a logistical nightmare to repatriate the bodies as well as running counter to the sense of brotherhood that war time service had engendered.

  13. 13.

    George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (London: Oxford University Press, 1990), 94.

  14. 14.

    Marina Larsson, “A disenfranchised grief. Post-war death and memorialisation in Australia after the First World War,” Australian Historical Studies 40, no. 1 (2009): 79.

  15. 15.

    Martin Crotty and Craig Melrose, “Anzac Day, Brisbane, Australia: Triumphalism, Mourning and Politics in Interwar Commemoration,” The Round Table 96, no. 393 (2007): 681.

  16. 16.

    Ken Inglis, Sacred Places War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998), 138.

  17. 17.

    Bruce Scates, “Bereavement and Mourning (Australia)”, in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson.

  18. 18.

    Catherine Moriarty, “The Absent Dead and Figurative First World War Memorials,” Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 39 (1995): 15.

  19. 19.

    Inglis, Sacred Places, 334.

  20. 20.

    Young, The Texture of Memory, viii.

  21. 21.

    John Richard Stephens, “Recent Directions in War Memorial Design,” The International Journal of the Humanities 9, no. 6 (2012): 151.

  22. 22.

    Stephens, “Recent Directions”, 151.

  23. 23.

    Joan Beaumont, “Remembering Australia’s First World War,” Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 1 (2015): 4. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2015.1000803.

  24. 24.

    See “Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall,” City of Sydney, accessed September 29, 2017. http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/yininmadyemi-thou-didst-let-fall/.

  25. 25.

    John Moremon, “A brief history of indigenous Australian at war,” accessed September 29, 2017. https://www.dva.gov.au/i-am/aboriginal-andor-torres-strait-islander/indigenous-australians-war.

  26. 26.

    Noah Riseman, “Serving Their Country: A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Service in the Australian Army,” Australian Army Journal Culture Edition X, no. 3 (2013).

  27. 27.

    Noah Riseman, In Defence of Country, Life stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Serviceman & women (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2016), 3.

  28. 28.

    Moreman, “indigenous Australian”.

  29. 29.

    Terry Garwood, Forgotten Heroes Aborigines at war from the Somme to Vietnam (Victoria Press, 1993), xi.

  30. 30.

    William Stanner, After the Dreaming (Sydney: ABC Books, 1991), 24.

  31. 31.

    Joan Beaumont, “The Anzac Legend,” in Australia’s War, 1914–1918, ed. Joan Beaumont (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin).

  32. 32.

    Carolyn Holbrook, “Consuming Anzac: some thoughts on the Anzac centenary”, Monash online, accessed November 9, 2015. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/news-events/consuming-anzac-some-thoughts-onthe-anzac-centenary/.

  33. 33.

    See Joan Beaumont, “Commemoration in Australia: A Memory Orgy?” Australian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (2015): 540.

  34. 34.

    Frank Bongiorno, “ANZAC and the politics of inclusion,” in Nation, memory and Great War commemoration, eds. Shanti Sumartojo and Ben Wellings (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014).

  35. 35.

    http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/vision/towards-2030/communities-and-culture/eora-journey.

  36. 36.

    “Eora Journey: Recognition in the Public Domain,” The City Of Sydney, accessed October 18, 2017. http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/about/public-art-strategy-policy/eora-journey-recognition-in-the-public-domain/.

  37. 37.

    The other components of Eora Journey are “a signature Aboriginal event; an economic plan to address the community’s access to education, employment and training opportunities, and an Aboriginal Knowledge and Cultural Centre to create opportunities for employment, tourism and sustainable industry and to promote cultural understanding among residents and visitors.” http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/about/public-art-strategy-policy/eora-journey-recognition-in-the-public-domain/.

  38. 38.

    “Eora Journey,” The City of Sydney, accessed October 18, 2017. http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/projects/eora-journey/.

  39. 39.

    John Connor, The Australian frontier wars, 1788–1838 (Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press, 2002); Henry Reynolds, Forgotten war (Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2013).

  40. 40.

    Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted–Jensen, “‘I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed’: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier,” accessed August 2, 2014. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2467836; https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2467836.

  41. 41.

    Reynolds, Forgotten war, 248.

  42. 42.

    Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, What’s wrong with ANZAC? The militarisation of Australian history (Sydney, NSW: New South, 2013), 138.

  43. 43.

    Katie Burgess, “Australian War Memorial named Australia’s number one landmark in TripAdvisor awards.” The Canberra Times, May 18, 2016. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/australian-war-memorial-named-australias-number-one-landmark-20160517-goxiz1.html.

  44. 44.

    Matt McDonald, “Remembering Gallipoli: Anzac, the Great War and Australian Memory,” Politics Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, no. 3 (2017): 417.

  45. 45.

    Alan Stephens, (2014) Reconciliation means recognising the Frontier Wars, accessed May 20, 2017. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-07/stephens-reconciliation-means-recognising-the-frontier-wars/5577436.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne Lacy, “Fractured Space,” in Art in the Public Interest, ed. Arlene Raven (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), 293.

  47. 47.

    In December 1992, Keating launched Australia’s programme for the International Year of the World’s indigenous People with a speech to a largely indigenous crowd at Redfern Park in Sydney. He was the first Prime Minister to acknowledge the impact of European settlement on indigenous Australians in a move that signified an alteration in the official interpretation of Australian history.

  48. 48.

    Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 89.

  49. 49.

    Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 6.

  50. 50.

    Padraic Gibson, “Imperialism, ANZAC nationalism and the Aboriginal experience of warfare,” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 6, no. 3 (2014): 4190. https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v6i3.4190.

  51. 51.

    Laurie Murphy-Oates, “Living Black,” accessed September 28, 2017. http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/living-black/article/2015/04/20/story-behind-sydneys-bullet-sculpture.

    See “Tony Albert in conversation,” Museums and Galleries of NSW, accessed September 29, 2017. https://mgnsw.org.au/articles/tony-albert-interview/.

  52. 52.

    “Tony Albert in Conversation,” 2017.

  53. 53.

    Hettie Perkins, Civic Actions Artists’ Practices Beyond the Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art (2017): 59.

  54. 54.

    Tony Albert, Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall, commemorative book produced by Cracknell and Lonergan Architects, 2015.

  55. 55.

    Young, The Texture of Memory, xii.

  56. 56.

    Young, The Texture of Memory, xii–xiii.

  57. 57.

    The landmark electoral referendum of 1967 was a vote on the amending of the federal government constitution to recognise the indigenous people of Australia. The amendment was overwhelmingly endorsed, winning 90 per cent of votes cast across the six states. For the first time, indigenous Australian were recognised as having the same civil rights as the predominantly white population. The Hyde Park ANZAC Memorial, completed in 1934, is the main commemorative military monument in Sydney.

  58. 58.

    See “Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall,” City of Sydney, accessed September 29, 2017. http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/yininmadyemi-thou-didst-let-fall/.

  59. 59.

    Thea Perkins, Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall, commemorative book produced by Cracknell and Lonergan Architects, 2016, 21.

  60. 60.

    Arthur C Danto, The State of the Art (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), 112.

  61. 61.

    Nuala C Johnson, “Mapping monuments: the shaping of public space and cultural identities,” Visual Communication 1, no. 3 (2002): 293–298.

  62. 62.

    Young, Texture of Memory, ix.

  63. 63.

    Crotty and Melrose, “Anzac Day,” 680.

  64. 64.

    Carolyn Holbrook, “Are We Brainwashing our Children? The Place of Anzac in Australian History,” Agora 51, no. 4 (2016): 19.

  65. 65.

    Clare Rhoden, “Ruins or Foundations: Great War Literature in the Australian curriculum. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature,” 12, no. 1 (2012), accessed January 1, 2017. http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/9811.

  66. 66.

    Bart Ziino, “The First World War in Australian History,” Australian Historical Studies 47, no. 1 (2016): 118–134.

  67. 67.

    Alexander M. Palmer, Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers (Military Minded, 1996), 1.

  68. 68.

    Inglis, Sacred Places.

  69. 69.

    Charles Griswold, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography,” in Art and the Public Sphere, ed. William Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 80–81.

  70. 70.

    Inglis, Sacred Places, 382.

  71. 71.

    Inglis, Sacred Places.

  72. 72.

    Inglis, Sacred Places, 387.

  73. 73.

    See Adrienne Francis, “National peacekeeping memorial, 12 years in the making, opens on Anzac Parade,” ABC News, accessed September 29, 2017. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-14/peacekeeping-memorial-opens-on-anzac-parade-in-canberra/8945020.

  74. 74.

    Graham Davis, “Fathers of the ANZACs: Boer War Memorial Dedication,” Returned and Services League (RSL) of Australia, accessed September 29, 2017. https://www.rslqld.org/RSLOutpost/RSL-Outpost/Military-History/Fathers-of-the-ANZACs-Boer-War-Memorial-Dedicatio.

  75. 75.

    Anderson, Imagined communities.

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  1. University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Martin Kerby & Margaret Baguley

  2. University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Malcom Bywaters

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Kerby, M., Bywaters, M., Baguley, M. (2019). Australian War Memorials: A Nation Reimagined. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_30

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