The first world war memorials in New South Wales: centres of meaning in the landscape

Abstract

SUMMARY The First World War was a momentous event in Australian experience, and provoked a mass building of memorials throughout the country. These memorials required a new approach to landscape design, since there was no established tradition of monumental design upon which to draw. This paper gives a typology. The building and unveiling of the memorials was an occasion for expressing patriotism, mourning and a sense of sacrifice and victory, but also for the interpretation of postwar events in the light of wartime experience. The war had caused deep divisions in Australian society over conscription, which were partly reflected, partly disguised, in the rhetoric of the memorials which stand as prominent centres of landscape meaning in many suburbs and country towns.