Assessment of the Methods Used by the Australian War Memorial

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Assessment of the Methods Used by the Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial fulfils its aims by commemorating through

understanding. It promotes awareness of war through an extensive

historical collection of relics, a multitude of dioramas and hundreds

of historical accounts concerning all military conflicts that common

Australian soldiers have been associated with. As a result an

illustration of actual warfare is presented, not a romanticised ideal

so often related to military conflict. Through this, the memorial

establishes remembrance which in turn commemorates those that gave the

ultimate sacrifice for their country. Yet the memorial also honours

those that offered their lives through both symbolism, which is

evident in all buildings, and the commemorative area.

Throughout his extensive travels throughout battlefields of Europe and

Gallipoli as Australia's official war correspondent throughout the

First World War, Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean gained an insight to the

life of a fighter, be he a common soldier or high ranking General.

With this knowledge he established a dream to construct a war memorial

that would, 'explain to Australians what their men had done and what

they experienced in the war.' With this vision he asked not

historians, but the soldiers themselves to amass relics that they

found suitable in representing the war. By the Great War's end, tonnes

of material were shipped back to Australia, and they formed the

backbone in conveying the history of Australia's involvement in war.

Yet Bean, often recognised as the father of Australia's National

military museum, aimed to also 'set aside a place in Aust...

... middle of paper ...

...very one of its goals and more than satisfies Charles

Bean's description of the building as, 'Here is their spirit, in the

heart of the land they loved, and here we guard the record which they

themselves made.'

Bibliography

1. CEW Bean, Anzac to Amiens: A Shorter History, Halstead Press,

Sydney, 1946

2. M Mckernan, Here is Their Spirit: A History Of The Australian War

Memorial, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1991

3. KS Inglis & J Brazier, Sacred Places: War Memorials In The

Australian Landscape, The Miegunyah Press, 1998

4. P Dennis, J Grey, E Morris, R Prior & J Connor, The Oxford

Companion To Australian Military History, Oxford University Press,

Melbourne, 1995

5. For The Fallen, 2004, http://www.anzacs.org/fallen.html

6. The Australian War Memorial, 2004, http://www.awm.gov.au/

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