A century after governments wished to erase the convict past, their place in Australian history was being celebrated in programs such as The Colony on SBS.
AAP/Hilton Cordell Productions/Simon Cardwell
Today, a convict ancestor is a matter of pride. But for past generations, including some convicts themselves, it was a shame that had to be hidden at all costs.
Norfolk Island has always had a strained relationship with mainland Australia – and the repeal of self-governance may intensify that strain.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Federal parliament has passed legislation that removes Norfolk Island’s self-government but strong local views about the tiny island’s independence have deep historical roots.
Drape ‘Anzac’ over an argument and, like a magic cloak, the argument is sacrosanct – even though it shouldn’t be.
AAP/Alexander Turnbull Library
Protests on Anzac Day, rather than being ‘utterly alien to Australians’, have a long tradition and embody the democratic right to dissent for which the troops fought.
What is obscured in our understanding of returned servicemen’s problems is the private pain of families who bear the brunt of these psychological strains.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
A ‘view from tower’ reveals the long rows of huts at Holsworthy internment camp, where Germans were interned during the First World War.
Paul Dubotzki/Dubotzki Collection
The democratic freedoms Australians hold dear today – freedom of the press, assembly and speech – were won on home soil by courageous women and men who sacrificed much, but rarely recognised for it.
The recent concentration on Victoria Cross heroes as major ‘carriers’ of the Anzac legend has skewed Australian military history.
AAP/Mark Graham
Australians now seem so fascinated by the Victoria Cross that such attention has begun to get in the way of a balanced perspective on its place in military history.
The Whitlam government had a reformist vision whose origins lay in the future prime minister’s own wartime experience.
AWM
While serving in the RAAF, future prime minister Gough Whitlam led his first political campaign, agitating among his own squadron in support of the 1944 referendum.
The Gallipoli campaign is frequently celebrated as the ‘birth’ of Australia as a nation, but were we already well on our way?
AWM
Every country has its most symbolic year from each of the world wars, and can trace the consequences of the bloodletting that accompanied the global realignment of the last century.
Silent tributes at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, representing more than 100,000 men and women lost in war.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Why did it take three-quarters of a century beyond the first world war for Australians to build our own tomb of the unknown soldier, remembering the 23,000 Australians who died with no known grave?
The idea of the Anzac soldier, as crafted by Australia’s official historian at Gallipoli, Charles Bean, has dominated historical memory.
AWM
Charles Bean made editorial decisions to eliminate the bloody realities of war in favour of a specially crafted and idealised construction of the Anzacs and the Gallipoli campaign.
Had hundreds of thousands of young Turkish men not joined the army and headed to Gallipoli, it’s without doubt modern Turkey would not have been formed.
AWM
What is rare in Australia is an adequate explanation and understanding of the Turkish perspective of the Gallipoli campaign.
For nurses going on active service, to have the close friendship of at least one other woman was of primary importance.
State Library of South Australia
The diaries of army nurses during the First World War are unsurpassed sources for discovering the nature of friendship during war.
In 1915, Australians came to terms with total war – and were prepared for the battle at Gallipoli and conscription in 1916.
Australian War Memorial/Flickr
It was not the excitement but the seriousness of the first world war that captured the imaginations of Australians. The experience of 1915 had a marked effect on local commitment to winning the war.
Malcolm Fraser appeared more comfortable in the media gaze out of politics than in it.
AAP/NAA
Malcolm Fraser’s relationship with the Australian media waxed and waned, from enthusiasm, pragmatism and caution to something, in the end, approaching mutual respect and perhaps even affection.
Aboriginal gargoyles are the Australian War Memorial’s only overt representation, albeit unintentional, of a violent history of colonisation.
James Sinclair
The Australian War Memorial promises to tell ‘our story’ about the nation’s war experience – but it silences many stories about Australia’s nationhood and glosses over Indigenous experience.
Faith Bandler will be remembered as a tireless advocate for the rights of South Sea Islanders in Australia.
AAP Image/Jane Dempster
Mrs Faith Bandler has died. We mourn our loss and honour her life. Her death on Friday marks the end of an era. At the age of 96 years, she outlived all the other black political activists of her generation…
In 2004, the Indigenous population of Redfern finally struck back at perceived endless police oppression and violence.
AAP/Sam Mooy
The aftermath of the 1934 Kalgoorlie riots, with their death toll of an “Aussie” and a “Slav”, the mass destruction of the homes of the Dings at Dingbat Flat and the rising horror in the town at how the…