Wednesday 25 April 2012 Jan McLellan Rizzo Visual Arts
Slide 3
Sir William Dean, a former Governor-General of Australia wrote
: Anzac is not merely about loss. It is about courage and endurance
and duty and love of country and mateship and good humour and the
survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of
dreadful odds.. These words are on the internal wall of the entry
courtyard to the Shrine of Remembrance Education Centre, on St
Kilda Rd, near Domain Road in Melbourne.
Slide 4
The Anzac Commemorative Medallion was instituted 1967. It was
awarded to surviving members of the Australian forces who served on
the Gallipoli Peninsula, or in direct support of the operations
from close off shore, at any time during the period from the first
Anzac Day in April 1915 to the date of final evacuation in January
1916. The medallion is cast in bronze and is approximately 7.5 cm
high and 5 cm wide and depicts Simpson and his donkey carrying a
wounded soldier to safety. It is bordered on the lower half by a
laurel wreath above the word ANZAC. The reverse shows a map in
relief of Australia and New Zealand superimposed by the Southern
Cross. The lower half is bordered by New Zealand fern leaves. The
name and initials of the recipient is engraved on the reverse.
Slide 5
Captain Edward Frederick Robert Bage (18881915) is part of the
Anzac story After attending Melbourne Grammar School, then
graduating in civil engineering from Melbourne University, Bage
joined the militia (like todays current Army Reserve) in 1909. Two
years later he transferred, as an officer, to the Royal Australian
Engineers. Not long after that, aged 23, he took leave to accompany
Douglas Mawsons Australasian Antarctic Expedition as astronomer and
recorder of tides. Bage led the expeditions southern sledging party
on a perilous 1,000-kilometre overland journey towards the magnetic
pole region. For weeks on end the group encountered blizzards,
freezing temperatures, snow-blindness and frost-bite. Their return,
with dwindling rations, became a race for survival. Bages quiet
determination, resolution, and foresight carried them through
always cheerful, ready with a hand to anybody who needed it he was
a born leader of men wrote Mawson later. Elsewhere, Mawsons far
eastern party struck disaster, leaving Mawson the sole survivor.
Back at base, Bage was one of six volunteers who remained behind to
wait for Mawson when he failed to return in time for the
expeditions sailing. They endured another winter before the relief
ship could come back for them.
Slide 6
So, having been a prize-winning student, athlete, and soldier,
then an Antarctic adventurer, Bage returned to his army appointment
and his role as an engineer. When the First World War broke out in
1914, he was commissioned in the AIF as second-in-command of the
3rd Field Company, Australian Engineers. He took part in the
landing at ANZAC on 25 April 1915. Twelve days later he was sent to
an exposed position to peg out a new trench line. He came under
intense machine-gun fire and was repeatedly hit. His dead body
could not be recovered until dark; he was later buried in the Beach
Cemetery at ANZAC.
Slide 7
Captain Bages grave at Anzac Cove can be visited today, but
many who died at Gallipoli and at other battlefields in World War I
had no known grave, or else their bodies lay in graves, but were
unidentifiable. After the end of the war the idea was formed that
one unidentified body should be brought back from a battlefield
cemetery and interred in Westminster Abbey, to symbolise all the
lost lives of the war.
Slide 8
. So in 1920, people in the United Kingdom who had lost a loved
one were given the hope that their son, father, brother or friend
lay in the Abbey tomb.
Slide 9
Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the future Queen Mother) placed her
bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, after she and the Duke
of York (the future King George VI) were married in 1923 in
Westminster Abbey The gesture was made in memory of her brother
Fergus, who died at the Battle of Loos in Belgium in World War 1.
Other royal brides who have married at Westminster Abbey have
continued the tradition.
Slide 10
So that after the wedding of Prince William and Katherine
Middleton, her flowers were placed on the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier
Slide 11
In my own family, my Dads uncle James McLellan went with his
brother Bill to fight in France, after Bill had already fought at
Gallipoli. Jim died in a terrible battle at Bullecourt and has no
known grave, although his name appears on a wall with 60,000 others
at the Australian cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux
Slide 12
Plans for a tomb for an Australian unknown soldier were first
put forward in the 1920s, but it was not until 1993 that with great
reverence, the remains of an unknown Australian were removed from a
cemetery in France and after a ceremony at the Australian War
Cemetery at Villers- Bretonneux, were transported to Australia.
After lying in state in Kings Hall in Old Parliament House, the
remains were interred in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War
Memorial on 11 November 1993 Remembrance Day.
Slide 13
The Hall of Memory, set above the Pool of Reflection, is the
heart of the Australian War Memorial. It can only be reached by
walking past the names of the 102,000 who have given their lives in
the service of Australia.
Slide 14
Artist Janet Lawrence created four pillars - combinations of
glass, wood, nickel, silver and marble, each 11 m x 0.6 m - to
symbolise the four elements: earth, wind, fire and water and
battlefields in all corners and climates on Earth.
Slide 15
The Unknown Australian Soldier was buried in a Tasmanian
blackwood coffin, with a slouch hat and a sprig of wattle. Soil
from the battlefield of Northern France was scattered on his tomb.
He represents all Australians who have been killed in war and for
my Dads generation and my Grandfather - who died a very old man the
year the soldiers remains came home - there was comfort in the
thought that it might have been Jim. Paul Keating, then the Prime
Minister of Australia, made a speech which explains beautifully all
that this soldiers tomb represents, both on Anzac Day 25 April the
anniversary of that first Gallipoli landing in 1915- and
Remembrance Day 11 November - the day the First World War ended in
1918. Paul Keatings speech