Imagining Arabia Heads to Canberra

Canberra is a town where Australia's military history is plain to see. Lining the broad avenue of Anzac Parade are a series of memorials commemorating individual campaigns and arms of the service, leading up to the monolithic Australian War Memorial. Not only is this impressive precinct testament to the powers of town planning, but (as you probably could have predicted if you have been reading this blog with any regularity) the history of Australia and New Zealand's involvement with the Middle East is sprinkled throughout the memorials and in the museum itself.   

The Australian War Memorial, perched atop its hill overlooking Anzac Parade

About a quarter of the way up Anzac Parade you come to the rather magnificent Desert Mounted Corps Memorial. This was the first memorial to be unveiled on Anzac Parade in 1968, and commemorates those Australian and New Zealand mounted troops who served in Egypt, Palestine and Syria from 1916-1918. The statue in Canberra is actually a recast of the original statue, unveiled in Port Said, Egypt in 1932. The original survived for two decades before being torn down by President Nasser's Egyptian government in the wave of anti-colonial nationalism following the 1956 Suez Crisis. 

As a New Zealander, I am not sure how I feel about the Australian hero swooping in to save his Kiwi mate, who has had his horse shot out from under him, but it certainly makes for a dynamic memorial!   

Further up Anzac Parade, on the other side of the road there is a very different memorial. The Kemal Ataturk Memorial, opened in 1985, was designed to honour Mustafa Kemal who led the Turkish troops opposing the Anzac landings at Gallipoli. He later went on to become the first President of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, but is a figure wrapped in legend. The famous 'mothers wipe away your tears' speech, which is credited to Ataturk was, almost certainly, not delivered by him, and indeed was finessed by an Australian Gallipoli veteran in the 1970s to be the speech with which we are familiar. Fittingly, however, for a man dubbed Ataturk (or 'Father of the Turks'), there was a wreath placed at the memorial when I visited, wishing Mustafa Kemal a happy father's day. 

Finally we make it to the Australian War Memorial itself. Unique among national war memorials, the AWM is a museum of Australia's involvement in war from the First World War through to modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a war museum, it is full of exhibits relating to the Middle East (which says something of the nature of our relationship with this region over the past century). I wanted to single out one particularly interesting, and controversial, collection item for discussion. 

During the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917, Australian troops overran Turkish trenches near the town of Shellal, and found that the Turks had partially uncovered remains of a sixth century Byzantine mosaic. In a fitting symbol for the destructive effects of war on all things bright and beautiful, the mosaic was damaged from having a machine gun nest dug into it. Others have told the story of how the mosaic made its way to Australia, so I will not do that here. All I will say is that artifacts like the Shellal Mosaic have recently become objects of interest again with the growing call for repatriation of cultural treasures looted by colonial powers. 

The placement of the mosaic makes me wonder if the AWM is aware of the controversial nature of the object but is uncertain how to manage that controversy. It was not easy to find in the museum - I had to ask an attendant for help locating it, and it was hidden away behind a partition wall in the otherwise unrelated Hall of Valour, which commemorates Australia's Victoria Cross recipients. I could be reading too much into this placement. It simply could be that there are few places to display the admittedly very large artwork, but it seemed a curious choice when there are several large open galleries relating to the Palestine campaign in which the mosaic was discovered.    

"What? No, certainly no looted Byzantine mosaic here"

Surprise!

The reason I was in Canberra  was to attend the '1919-1939 - Towards a New History of the Interwar Period' conference at UNSW Canberra. It was an enlightening couple of days, covering everything from economics and international law, to interwar art and literature and the Australian military in the 20s and 30s. I would like to acknowledge the generous support of UNSW Canberra and the Society for Military History in enabling me to attend the conference, and participate in a series of interesting and stimulating discussions. 

     - Josh