Remembering Gallipoli: Anzac, the Great War and Australian Memory Politics

Abstract

Few could have predicted that an ill‐fated landing of Allied troops in modern‐day Turkey in April 1915 would become the founding moment of the Australian nation. Australians were amongst several nations represented and did not suffer the most casualties, while the battle itself and the campaign of which it was a part was a military failure. Yet the notion that this battle constituted a “coming of age” for a nascent nation, and that Australian soldiers had exhibited the defining characteristics of a national type, has become a powerful — even hegemonic — story of Australian identity. Many analysts have pointed to the militaristic, masculine and mono‐cultural dimensions of a myth that weds the nation to a colonial past and in the process imposes limits on the ways in which we can imagine the nation and its role in the world. Yet as the Australian government geared up for the 2015 centenary of that landing — Anzac Day — with an unprecedented commitment of resources for commemorative activities, the shadow cast by the broader Anzac myth over Australian society and politics triggered surprisingly little public debate. This paper explores the key contours of the Anzac myth, examining the politics of Anzac memory and memorialisation in the context of the centenary of the Great War and the landing of Australian troops at Gallipoli.