Australia has many reminders of the cost of war but none as powerful as the National War Memorial and ANZAC Parade in Canberra. The 102,000 Australians who have lost their lives are remembered in the commemorative area including the Hall of Memory with the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier.
The building itself is appropriately impressive, designed in the shape of of a Byzantine cross, with strong Art Deco elements.
There’s a great museum within the memorial, as comprehensive and well presented as any I’ve seen around the world. For those interested in planes there’s a gleaming P51 Mustang, a huge Hawker Sea Hawk, a Kittyhawk, part of a MIG15, a Lancaster bomber, and a pair of rare German experimental WW2 planes which I’ve never seen anywhere else, a Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and ME262. Both were familiar from playing the computer game Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe many years ago.
A Japanese mini submarine sunk in Sydney Harbour in 1942 reminds that WW2 reached as far as Australia’s shores, a story rarely told in the European centric accounts of the war.
The main floor covers WW1 and WW2, with a number of powerful dioramas.
Downstairs covers the South Africa War (which doesn’t even get a mention in London’s Imperial War Museum despite it involving Britain far more than Australia), Afghanistan, and Vietnam, in which 50,000 Australians served over the course of a decade.
ANZAC Parade leads from the Australian War Memorial toward the Parliament building(s). It’s an impressive earth red wedge lined with many war memorials.
1 thought on “Australian War Memorial and ANZAC Parade”