ABSTRACT

The year's major cultural initiatives, rolling over into 2016 and 2017, focused on reclaiming the "spirit of Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC)". The commemoration of the unsuccessful campaign by the ANZAC, part of the British-led task force sent to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Ottoman Turkish forces at Gallipoli in April 1915, was a significant event for Australians of all ages. According to the historian Dale Blair, the story was promulgated in official war histories to "enshrine, mythologise and sanitise" the enormous death toll suffered by Australia in World War one. So the Anzac centenary of 2015 has been a double-edged cultural experience for many contemporary Australians who may have grown uneasy with the patriotic clichés that have tended to shape the narrative of the annual tributes to fallen heroes. In Australia, many memorials have been financed by public subscription or at private expense. The legal "transfer" of ownership or resumption by the state is uncommon.