Thursday, 25 April 2024
ANZAC Memorial
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

I pay my respects to the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of this land, and to Elders past, present, and emerging from all parts of this nation and acknowledge all First Nations people who have served, as we mark 110 years since the commencement of the First World War.

In The Story of ANZAC, published in 1921, historian and Australian War Correspondent  Charles Bean wrote with remarkable insight, so soon after the War, that it was on this day in 1915 at Gallipoli - the first major amphibious landing in modern warfare - “that the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born.” [1]

35 years later, Alan Moorehead, who had been a war correspondent in the Second World War, returned to the Gallipoli story in his book of that name, published on ANZAC Day, 1956.  Two of Moorehead’s uncles had served at Gallipoli.

Possessed of a correspondent’s flair and clarity, Moorehead wrote, as if still in the present:

“A strange light plays over the Gallipoli landing on April 25, and no matter how often the story is retold there is still an actuality about it, a feeling of suspense and incompleteness …, a hundred questions remain unanswered, and in a curious way one feels that the battle might still lie before us in the future; that there is still time to make other plans and bring it to a different ending.”[2]

As we know too well, the ending of a battle doesn’t change the actuality of the loss of life and limb.  On that first day in Gallipoli, 620 Australian lives were lost. By eight months later, another 7500 Australian lives had been taken. The tragic irony of war is that while this loss of life is so senseless, and the anguish of the families and mates which follows is so raw, it does not diminish the courage and endurance of those who fought.  

New Zealand, British, French, and Turkish people would count among the toll of over 130,000, with Turkish losses comprising over two thirds of that toll. Those numbers give voice to the truism that there are two sides in a battle and what happens in one camp happens in the other.  

The artist Sidney Nolan spent a large part of his life trying to capture what Gallipoli represented. After Moorehead published his Gallipoli book to acclaim, Nolan painted his Gallipoli series, consisting of 252 paintings and drawings which were donated to the Australian War Memorial; a gift in honour of his younger brother, who drowned while awaiting demobilisation from the Second World War.

Nolan referred to Gallipoli as ‘our Trojan War’; our Greek tragedy.[3] Nolan wasn’t the first to make that connection.  The ancient city of Troy sat at the entrance to the Dardanelles Strait, where Homer’s Greek tragedy was played out.  The British Commander of the Gallipoli Campaign, General Sir Ian Hamilton, in looking up at that landscape, also invoked the Iliad, saying: “Are the High Gods bringing our new Iliad to grief? At whose door will history leave the blame?”[4]

Twenty-one years after the conclusion of the First World War, Australian forces would again be called upon, serving in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa, south-east Asia and the Pacific. Our Navy, Army and Air Force would later serve in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other conflict areas around the world. We have veterans of those deployments here today and we thank them, as we do the doctors and nurses who accompanied our troops into action, and the war correspondents and the artists who brought the stories home to us all, evincing courage under fire.

This year, we also mark the 25^th anniversary of INTERFET[5], the successful Timor-Leste taskforce, led by former Governor-General, General Sir Peter Cosgrove.

Today, an ANZAC Day commemorative service is being held in Dili, in the presence of Australian and New Zealand veterans, a testimony to the bonds between them and the Timor-Leste people. In a world that continues to be politically and militarily charged, in places riven by war, we reflect on the important continuing role of peacekeepers.

As both Moorehead and Nolan intimated, war offers perspectives on values which are important to us.

In 1918, three years before the publication of his work, The Story of Anzac, Charles Bean had written: “the big thing in the war for Australia was the discovery of the character of Australian(s). It was character which rushed the hills at Gallipoli and held on.”^[6] This ‘spirit’, this ‘character’, continues to be reflected in our community.

It is seen in the care of our war graves and in the solemnity of our ANZAC services.  This Commemorative Service, conducted by the Returned and Services League of Australia NSW Branch; the ANZAC Field of Remembrance Service conducted by the Families of Veterans Guild; the Coloured Diggers March at Redfern, and the many others around NSW, not only connect us to our history, they connect us to each other. They offer places of shared contemplation and reflection.

That same spirit is seen in those who continue to serve our nation in our Defence Force and those who serve the community as first responders, so strongly brought home to us last week.  

Later this year, we mark the 90th anniversary of this ANZAC Memorial, funded by the people of NSW. Public collections commenced on the first anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Here, in the centre of our city, it pays homage to the women and men from 1,701 towns and communities around our State, Australians who served in that Great War.

Here, at the Pool of Reflection, we are reminded that remembrance matters.

Lest we forget

[1] Charles Bean’s Story of ANZAC concluded with the declaration that it was on 25 April 1915, “that the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born”:

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bean-charles-edwin-5166

[2] Quoted in Patrick Walters, The Riddle of the Landing (2015), Australian Strategic Policy Institute:

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-riddle-of-the-landing/

[3] Interviews with Ivan Page (1978) and Gavin Fry (1982), Australian War Memorial

[4] https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/dawn/plan

[5] International Force East Timor

[6] Charles Bean, In Your Hands, Australians, 1918 in:

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bean-charles-edwin-5166