Tonight we were able to cross off a further two attractions off our to-do list: the Museum of Australia and the Australian War Memorial. We returned to the Museum this morning and spent a couple of hours there before lunch. Chris did a rush through of galleries he had not visited and I reviewed areas that had caught my fancy.
I did mention a couple of days ago doubt and ignorance as to any
influence the Makassans might
have had on the Australian aboriginal people in the north during their two
centuries of sea slug harvesting. Today I managed to discover that the Makassans had made
their mark after all; they passed on the habit of tobacco pipe smoking and left
dugout canoes, the former, nothing to be too proud of, and the latter which never
really caught on.
After lunch we returned for the last time to the War Memorial where I
returned to the Colonial gallery to swat up on the contribution Australian
troops made to the Boer War. Unlike Chris who had far more of the gallery to
speed view, I had time and the desire to understand this part of history better
than the vague overview gained from reading James Michener’s The Covenant about twenty or thirty
years ago. It was interesting to learn the how’s and why’s and the ultimate
disgust many outside Britain ultimately felt for this war; an invasion of
foreign lands to gain control of diamond mines. It was also appalling to be
reminded how hideously the British and their supporters (including Australians,
Canadians and New Zealanders) treated the Boer women and children they rounded
up from their farms into concentration camps.
I returned to the Hall of Memory and stood looking up into the beautifully
designed high domed ceiling, and at the lovely stained glass windows. There
were other tourists there, one a small tour party and the murmuring of hushed
commentary added to the ambience. I stood near the door and read the speech
that Paul Keating made when the Unknown
Soldier was laid to rest here in 1993, and was very moved, so moved I record
it below here, for my own reference. Australia
can be replaced with New Zealand, or Turkey or any other country where lives
have been lost in war.
We do not know this Australian's name and we never
will.
We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not
know where he was born, nor precisely how and when he died. We do not know
where in Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the battlefields
of Europe. We do not know his age or his circumstances – whether he was from
the city or the bush; what occupation he left to become a soldier; what
religion, if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not know who
loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we do not know who they are. His
family is lost to us as he was lost to them. We will never know who this
Australian was.
Yet he has always been among those whom we have
honoured. We know that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the
Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who volunteered for service in
the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that
war and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of the
100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.
He is all of them. And he is one of us.
This Australia and the Australia he knew are like
foreign countries. The tide of events since he died has been so dramatic, so
vast and all – consuming, a world has been created beyond the reach of his
imagination.
He may have been one of those who believed that the
Great War would be an adventure too grand to miss. He may have felt that he
would never live down the shame of not going. But the chances are he went for
no other reason than that he believed it was the duty he owed his country and
his King.
Because the Great War was a mad, brutal, awful
struggle, distinguished more often than not by military and political
incompetence; because the waste of human life was so terrible that some said
victory was scarcely discernible from defeat; and because the war which was
supposed to end all wars in fact sowed the seeds of a second even more terrible
war – we might think this Unknown Soldier died in vain.
But, in honouring our war dead, as we always have
and as we do today, we declare that this is not true. For out of the war came a
lesson which transcended the horror and tragedy and the inexcusable folly. It
was a lesson about ordinary people – and the lesson was that they were not
ordinary. On all sides they were the heroes of that war; not the generals and
the politicians but the soldiers and sailors and nurses – those who taught us
to endure hardship, to show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to
believe in ourselves, to stick together.
The Unknown Australian Soldier whom we are
interring today was one of those who, by his deeds, proved that real nobility
and grandeur belongs, not to empires and nations, but to the people on whom
they, in the last resort, always depend.
That is surely at the heart of the ANZAC story, the
Australian legend which emerged from the war. It is a legend not of sweeping
military victories so much as triumphs against the odds, of courage and
ingenuity in adversity. It is a legend of free and independent spirits whose
discipline derived less from military formalities and customs than from the
bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity. It is a democratic tradition,
the tradition in which Australians have gone to war ever since.
This Unknown Australian is not interred here to
glorify war over peace; or to assert a soldier's character above a civilian's;
or one race or one nation or one religion above another; or men above women; or
the war in which he fought and died above any other war; or one generation
above any that has been or will come later.
The Unknown Soldier honours the memory of all those
men and women who laid down their lives for Australia. His tomb is a reminder
of what we have lost in war and what we have gained.
We have lost more than 100,000 lives, and with them
all their love of this country and all their hope and energy.
We have gained a legend: a story of bravery and
sacrifice and, with it, a deeper faith in ourselves and our democracy, and a
deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian.
It is not too much to hope, therefore, that this
Unknown Australian Soldier might continue to serve his country - he might
enshrine a nation's love of peace and remind us that, in the sacrifice of the
men and women whose names are recorded here, there is faith enough for all of
us.
It was about 3 pm when we left the Memorial; we both agreed that we had
given this and the Museum our best shot, but could, and would, return to these
places again if and when we next visited Canberra.
On our way back to camp, we popped into the Woolworths store in Dickson
to top up with fruit and vegetables. We stood in a check out queue far too
long; the woman in front of us had bought her plastic bags along inside yet another
plastic bag, and each of the bags inside had been carefully and neatly rolled up
to minimise space. As a result the checkout operator had to sort, shake and
unravel each bag. The customer also requested that the bags were not loaded up
too much so the whole process took a very long time. Here in Canberra, as in
South Australia, plastic bags are taboo and customers are encouraged to bring
their own “green” bags. Personally I find this very annoying because we re-use
our supermarket bags for rubbish wrapping and other practical purposes. We do
now of course have our own stock of “green” bags and try to remember to take
them with us. Our bags were all purchased from Coles and while they don’t all
have that supermarket’s name emblazoned across them, the logo is known to
belong to Coles. This is therefore interesting to think about when one fills
them with purchases from Woolworths. How does that work with marketing?
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