Open Writing

* *

As November the eleventh approaches, my mind turns to Remembrance Day. Here in the Antipodes, Remembrance Day is ANZAC day. Always at the 11th hour of the 11th of day of the 11th month we remember.

I look at our war memorial, a beautiful piece of work, and around it I see chip papers and beer bottles, I see wreaths torn apart. People grumble when the flower beds are destroyed and I think, “Lest we forget,” and wonder if the hooligans who desecrate these places of remembrance would answer their country’s call and fight for a just war, and I emphasis ‘just,’ for many of our skirmishes today are not the just wars our fathers and grandfathers fought in. But is war ever justified? Justified or not, men die and women weep and all should be remembered for their sacrifice.

But why this in a series about Australia? Because I have been to a war memorial which will never be desecrated and which children will visit again and again. Where? Canberra and this will be my last article on Australia as to write anything else would be the stuff of tourism. Maybe we will return and cross the Nullabor one day but that story can wait.

Canberra is a fabulous city designed by Chicago architect, Burley Griffin. A new city drawn out to precision and built at “the meeting place” for many aborigines. Canberra in aborigine means the meeting place. It is in a flat valley, surrounded by hills. The Molonglo River dammed by the Scrivener Dam, forms Lake Burley Griffin in its centre. A lake you can walk around, through park land, where you can sit and listen to the carillon chiming every hour on its little island, and watch the James Cook water spout spraying its water high into the air. But this is not about Canberra it is about the War Memorial and its impact.

The Australian War Memorial is built like a great castle on a hill opposite the Federal Parliament buildings on a similar hill. ANZAC Avenue, flanked by monuments to all the men and women who have served in all the wars, runs straight and wide from it down to the lake and a similar swath of clear land, a green highway, leads to the Federal Parliament House on the opposite hill. It is quite something to stand on the steps and look down that avenue. You don’t see the roads which cross it and you don’t see the lake. You merely see the link between the two buildings.

Why has this place moved me so much? Let’s take a closer look. It is supervised mostly by ex-service men and women, all dressed in red sweaters and smart pants, all knowledgeable about the area you are in. But this is no ordinary museum.

You climb the steps and enter through what may be described as the portcullis of a castle. The cloisters lead off to the right and left and in the courtyard in front of you is a large oblong pool of still water, backed by a high memorial window. The eternal flame burns on this lake, the flame to the unknown warrior, a flame which is never allowed to go out.

But let’s take a look around this living museum, for that is what it is, not a series of glass cabinets and static displays. You start with WW1 and the trenches, you can walk through a trench on duckboards and see the rats, see the maimed soldiers and hear the guns. You learn about Simpson and his donkey and see the dioramas of trench warfare. You stand beside a WW1 soldier and look at his uniform and equipment and compare it with today’s everyday climbing gear and wonder how he survived. ANZAC Cove is real to you here, as are Flanders fields.

WW2 opens up. You enter the bomb shelters in London and feel and hear the falling bombs. You stand in a Lancaster bomber and I think of my father who used to make them, you see the bomb doors open, feel the vibrations and see the search lights, you hear the pilot and the men talking through the intercoms, you are there, no you won’t be shot down but you can sense what those men in Bomber Command felt.

Three Japanese submarines entered Sydney Harbour in May 1942, their target was USS Chicago. They failed in their mission but before they were sunk they destroyed HMAS Kuttabul, killing 19 men and injuring 10 more and damaged nine areas of Sydney. The war in the Pacific had reached Australia. Sitting in the amphitheatre beside one of the destroyed submarines, the light, sound and moving pictures make the battle real for you. You look closer at the midget submarine and wonder how the two man crew moved about, just enough room to crawl, you feel for them too, perhaps they had wives and families, they certainly had mothers.

Walking through the Malayan jungles, you meet Japanese soldiers. The Rising Sun shines above you as you enter the surrender hall. Just a few of the places to visit in this special place, a day isn’t long enough to absorb it all.

All this and much more and every name of every ANZAC who has fallen on the fields of battle is recorded in the Hall of Valour. “Lest we forget.” It is indeed a living museum and you do not come away from it sensing any glory in war, nor without admiring the courage of the men and women who have taken part in all the wars. There is no glory but there is courage.

The car park at the back of the museum is usually full of buses which bring school children to look around this special place. They come from miles away on field trips and, no doubt, many are billeted in Canberra before they head back home. Australians have a high regard for this place.

Children emerge and, as with all school parties, off the bus means freedom, noise, run about etc, but once inside the museum no teacher has discipline problems. This place grips the child’s imagination. The sound of the guns and the bombs, the cry of the maimed, the dark and searchlights in the sky make war real to them, not the stuff of the TV screen.

May God grant that they may never be part of such things. Not a child I have seen leaves this place in the state of excitement with which they entered. They have been amazed and involved and let’s hope that they understand the impact of war.

I stand on the steps of the museum, having spent a little time, head bowed, beside the eternal flame, and I look across to Federal Parliament House with its flag flying high, a magnificent building and no doubt the next place the children will visit, with its copy of Magna Carta, the foundation of our democracy, and a man in a red jersey stands beside me. “We are here,” he says, “so that those over there can look at us and think about the consequences of their actions.”

“Lest we forget.”