Representing nation, dividing community: The Broken Hill War Memorial, New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

The social commemoration of warfare is one fraught with potential contradictions. In Australia, the foundation of nation is often regarded as having derived from the World War I experience, in which Australians fought independently of the British for the first time since Australian Federation in 1901. The Anzac myth, as it has become known, draws on the Gallipoli experience and the distinctiveness of the 'Diggers' (Australian soldiers) who were widely perceived as independent and rugged, as suited their home experience. But this myth, one still perpetuated annually on Anzac Day, is one that was not shared by all the community from its very inception. Australia at the end of the Great War saw the erection of monuments to the dead and victorious throughout the land, but the biography of a single monument, erected in the staunchly unionist mining town of Broken Hill, illustrates the different understandings of such war memorials and how the social commemoration of war, even in such a supposedly unified nation as Australia, can divide a community and demonstrate a continuation of pre-war struggles.