Anzac Memorial

The Anzac Memorial is a heritage-listed war memorial, museum and monument located in Hyde Park South near Liverpool Street in the CBD of Sydney, Australia.
The Art Deco monument was designed by C. Bruce Dellit, with the exterior adorned with monumental figural reliefs and sculptures by Rayner Hoff, and built from 1932 to 1934 by Kell & Rigby. This state-owned property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 23 April 2010.
The memorial is the focus of commemoration ceremonies on Anzac Day, Remembrance Day and other important occasions. It was built as a memorial to the Australian Imperial Force of World War I. Fund raising for a memorial began on 25 April 1916, the first anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing at Anzac Cove for the Battle of Gallipoli. It was opened on 24 November 1934 by Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. In 2018, refurbishments and a major expansion were completed. The memorial was officially reopened by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.

History

Aboriginal land

Material in rock shelters reveals that Aboriginal people inhabited the Sydney Harbour area from at least 25,000 years ago. The Gadigal, who formed part of the Darug nation, were the Aboriginal traditional owners of the inner Sydney area, upon which the Anzac Memorial stands. It is believed that the southern end of Hyde Park, where the ANZAC Memorial is located, was used as a "contest ground" for staging combative trials between Aboriginal warriors, watched avidly by the British in the early days of the colony. It is remarkable that the State's most grand and monumental war memorial should be positioned on this historical site of indigenous combat.

Origins of the term "Anzac"

The term "Anzac" began as an acronym for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in World War I, but it was soon accepted as a word in its own right. The Anzacs formed part of the expeditionary force organised by Britain and France to invade the Gallipoli Peninsula and clear the Dardanelles Straits for the British Royal Navy. The Australian Anzacs represented the national effort from a young nation taking its part in the Great War and reports of the courage they displayed at Gallipoli became the most enduring legend of Australian military history.
After the withdrawal from Gallipoli, the Anzac infantry divisions went on to fight against Germany on the Western Front. The Light Horse fought to protect the Suez Canal against the Turks and joined the forces fighting in the Middle East. On the anniversary of Anzac Day in 1918, the Australian infantry reinforced the legend when it stopped the German advance at Villers-Bretonneux on the Somme. Australians were successfully used as shock troops at Ypres, Amiens, Mont St Quentin and Peronne, and took a leading part in breaking through the Hindenburg Line, in their last major offensive.
From an Australian population of around four and a half million, enlistments in the army and navy numbered 416,809, a total that represents one-half of the men of military age in Australia at that time. Altogether, 60,000 Australians were killed and 167,000 were injured, a higher toll proportionately than was suffered by any other British Empire country. Small wonder that those who returned wanted to see the sacrifice of their dead comrades remembered.
The first Anzac Day in NSW was organised by a committee within the Returned Soldiers Association of NSW, an organisation formed by men who had been invalided home. Later the organisation was subsumed by the Returned Soldiers' Sailors' Imperial League of Australia, finally named the Returned and Services League. The original objectives of the day of commemoration were to remember dead comrades, induce young men to enlist and collect money for an ANZAC Memorial monument. NSW Premier WA Holman's Labor government promised a pound for pound subsidy to match the money raised on the first Anzac Day. In 1917 the RSSILA requested that 25 April be declared 'Australia's National Day' and gazetted as a public holiday. Both the Queensland and Australian governments made Anzac Day a public holiday in 1921. The official public holiday was first gazetted in NSW in 1925.

Developing the memorial concept in Australia

Historian Ken Inglis believes that the "war memorial" is a twentieth century concept which memorialised the human cost of war rather than the victorious outcome, as the former military monuments had done, and celebrated the sacrifice of ordinary soldiers rather than focusing on the men who led them. The names of those who made the ultimate sacrifice are differentiated from the names of those who returned. Whether returned or not, the memorials record the soldiers' service to the nation. This trend to list both the returned and the fallen was uniquely Australian, reflecting the all volunteer nature of the Australian forces.
Each capital city developed its own major memorial, with many smaller memorials in the suburbs, and regional areas. The major memorials and their dates of construction are as follows:

Darwin Cenotaph, Darwin – 1921
War Memorial, Hobart − 1925
State War Memorial Cenotaph, Perth – 1928–1929
Shrine of Remembrance, Brisbane – 1930
National War Memorial, Adelaide – 1931
Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne – 1928–1934
ANZAC Memorial, Sydney – 1934
Australian War Memorial, Canberra – 1941

The earlier memorials are generally in the form of obelisks, sometimes with applied sculpture, while most of the later examples are commemorative buildings with a range of rooms and uses. The social meanings of war memorials increased in complexity as time went on. The later examples such as the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, 1934, the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney, 1934 and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, 1941, represented the new trends in the symbolism of memorials more than the simple columns, obelisks and statues of citizen soldiers erected during the fighting and immediately after it. The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne is the most comparable monument to the ANZAC Memorial in Australia, both comprising one principal commemorative space, surrounded and above a series of administrative and exhibition spaces, contained within an imposing landmark building in differing architectural styles, set within a formal landscape.

Authorising the ANZAC Memorial

In 1918 the RSSILA in 1918 published its aims for the monument:

The building was to be a memorial for those who died;
It was to be architecturally worthy of its high purpose;
It was to provide headquarters for those working to assist widows and children of those who were killed and also, those AIF members who returned;
It was to house the records of the AIF;
It would be a meeting place and a source of assistance with repatriation; and
It would provide a centre for any later campaigns on behalf of the AIF and their dependants.

After 1919, all the state's war memorial building committees were required to seek expert advice from a War Memorials Advisory Committee comprising representatives from the Town Planning Association, Institute of Architects, Royal Society of Artists and the National Art Gallery. A proposal to build the memorial on Observatory Hill was withdrawn due to the planned proximity of the roads leading onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The proposal to use part of Hyde Park for the Anzac Memorial was promoted by former city surveyor Norman Weekes who was redesigning Hyde Park after it had been virtually destroyed during the construction of the city railway. Assisted by architect Raymond McGrath, Weekes produced a plan with two axial avenues running north -south and east–west, the latter being in line with the transept of St Mary's Cathedral. He envisaged the intersection of these avenues as an ideal site for a commemorative column and balanced that with an Anzac Memorial at the southern end. However, progress on the memorial was impeded until legislation established a board of trustees for the building and the manner in which the site would be chosen was passed in 1923.
The Trustees gained Parliamentary approval for Weekes' plan in 1929 on the condition that the area dedicated to the memorial would be limited in size. The Advisory Board for the Hyde Park Remodelling chose the southern end of the park to site the monument. The National Council of Women and Anzac Fellowship of Women objected to this site because it was considered to be insufficiently commanding, while artist Julian Ashton pointed out that skyscrapers would soon overshadow its position.
About this time another war memorial was bequeathed to Australians by the late JF Archibald, co-founder of the Bulletin newspaper, to commemorate the association of Australia and France in the Great War of 1914–1918. Created by Francois Sicard, winner of the Prix de Rome in 1891, the Public Trustee requested that it be installed at the site of Weekes' proposed column at the northern end of Hyde Park. Major Hubert Colette and JB Waterhouse supervised the erection of the Archibald Memorial Fountain, which was completed on 14 March 1932. This was when work was beginning on the ANZAC Memorial building at the southern end of the same avenue.
Debates about the style of the ANZAC Memorial can be generally divided into soldiers' versus women's groups which supported utility versus beauty respectively. The majority of returned soldiers looked for a building that would meet their immediate needs for association, while women's groups tended to favour a structure that would be commemorative. After ten years of debate, the RSSILA and the disabled veterans bodies all agreed on Anzac Day 1928 that the building "should be commemorative rather than utilitarian". As the RSSILA state president Fred Davison expressed it, the League had finally agreed to a "shrine of remembrance" such as their Victorian counterparts had begun to build. The soldiers' needs were not entirely abandoned and in the spirit of compromise one-seventh of the funding was allocated to incorporate offices where the returned soldiers' organisations could look after their members.