Beyond the familiar ideas of mateship and sacrifice, Anzac Day offers an opportunity to teach young people a more complicated but meaningful version of history.
As trans-Tasman borders re-open and in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, Anzac Day gains new meaning and presents new challenges – just as it has always done.
Amid the trauma and boredom of war, soldiers turned to reading — often magazines they wrote themselves.
Crowds ahead of the dawn service at Canberra’s National War Memorial in 2018. Attendance at the service fell from 120,000 in 2015 to 35,000 in 2019.
Rohan Thomson/AAP
Beautifully directed, powerfully acted, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli still captures the devastating emotional toll of war, 40 years after it first premiered.
Australian soldiers in the trenches at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in 1915.
State Library of Victoria/Wikimedia Commons
When the honour of Australia’s revered soldiers is questioned, so, too, is the national self-image. But war is an ugly business, and we pay a price for tethering it so tightly to our identity.
There is no weapon more visceral than the bayonet. It encourages an intimate form of killing, and during WW1, Australia troops plunged, parried and stabbed with great vigour.
Turkish soldiers in a trench at Gallipoli. The way Turkish youth commemorate the battle tells us much about the country’s politics.
Ausstralian Dept of Veterans Affairs
Brad West, University of South Australia and Ayhan Aktar, Istanbul Bilgi University
At Gallipoli this Anzac Day, thousands of Turkish youth will re-enact a march that stopped the Anzac advance in 1915. The march has taken on new significance in Turkey since an attempted coup in 2016.
In 1960, historian Ken Inglis wondered if Anzac functioned as a secular religion in Australian society. In 2017, we can confidently answer: yes, it does.
The Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day, is marked by Chinese people by going to the cemetery to clean up tombs, bring flowers, and make offerings to their ancestors.
Jerome Favre/AAP
Might the rise of heritage tourism and the increasing ease of international travel lead to more of Australia’s military experiences overseas being better understood?
Senior Lecturer, Classics and Ancient History and Director of Teaching and Learning (ugrad), School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University