One year ago today, the Australian War Memorial joined the Commons on Flickr.  We put up a set of 30 photos of soldiers, sailors, nurses, airmen, wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, a prime minister, and a koala. The photos are part of our photo collection of well over a million images which covers the experience of Australians at war and Australian military history from the 1860s to the present.  We have uploaded other sets on the Commons since then, each with its own theme: Christmas, children, animals, ANZAC Day, and First World War aviation.

 The 103 images have been viewed almost 180,000 times; there have been over 530 comments, 2,000 favorites, 340 tags and 830 contacts. read on

The notebooks, diaries and folders created by Charles Bean during and after the First World War have immense historic value and are considered to be one of the most significant records created by a single Australian. The collection includes 286 volumes of diaries and historical notebooks recorded by Bean at the time and often at the front line. The diaries are firsthand accounts of the war and offer a unique perspective due to Bean’s status as official correspondent. read on

The notebooks and diaries of C.E.W. Bean provide valuable insight into the last days of the First World War. Bean was Australia’s sole official correspondent and he worked assiduously throughout the four years of the war recording events, often from the front line.

Charles Bean was staying in Lille, France during November, 1918. He was an experienced investigator and interviewer and his diaries of the weeks before Armistice detail the emotions and concerns of those who knew the war was coming to an end. Bean, who generally had access to all levels of command, writes of conversations with Generals John Monash and William Birdwood and discusses the opinions of members of the international press and political leaders including Australia’s Prime Minister Billy Hughes on the peace process. Bean spent much of his time throughout the war interviewing Australian soldiers and recording their stories. During the last months of the war he takes the time to observe and record the feelings of average French civilians noting their opinions and feelings towards Germany.

The weeks leading up to Armistice are described by Bean in his diary as subdued. He wrote “I think it is the dead who rise up between the survivors” that prevents “any sort of Bacchanalian rejoicing”. Journalists and those in command that Bean talked to were initially sceptical about Germany’s intentions. After the Kaiser and his son had abdicated and fled on the 10 November, scepticism turned to a concern about what position Germany would be in to negotiate peace and who was in command. He noted conversations that he had with military commanders, politicians and journalists and recorded their concerns about the potential break up of Germany. Many feared that the country would slide into Bolshevism. Bean wrote that if Germany split there may not be money to compensate Belgium and France. By November Bean did not support the demands on Germany strongly expressed by Billy Hughes. Australia’s Prime Minister was in France lobbying through the press and political channels for extensive reparations for all the Allied countries including Australia. Bean described the speech that Hughes gave to the French War Cabinet as unrealistic.   read on

 

 

War films show soldiers constantly locked in battle and participating in non-stop action – but the reality of war is actually much different. “No Dramas”, a film by Robert Nugent commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, shows what life is really like for our troops deployed to combat zones.

Shot in Iraq in April 2006, the film explores the isolation and routines of Australian soliders, and the long periods of waiting they endure before the inevitable moments of extreme action.

“No Dramas” will screen as part of the Canberra International Film Festival on the evening of Saturday 7 November.

For further details see the CIFF website  http://www.canberrafilmfestival.com.au/2009/10/05/no-dramas

 

The Australian War Memorial faces unique challenges presented by the modern age to its collection development for recent conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. With email, phones and internet communicative tools largely replacing traditional keepsakes such as diaries and letters, this has made identifying and retaining objects of the ADF experience in modern conflict rather difficult. Furthermore, given that the number of ADF personnel serving overseas is far less than those who saw service in such conflicts as the World Wars, this also limits the amount of material representing recent conflicts and therefore what will shape the Memorial’s collections in the future.

One attempt to address this issue involved a representative from the Memorial being sent, in late 2008 to accompany Australian forces in Iraq. Mal Booth, former Head of the Memorial’s Research Centre, was fortunate enough spend time with Australian forces in Iraq and was able to identify and target items which would be of interest to the Memorial. Some of this material was identified on the industrious HMAS Parramatta, which was at that time conducting its second tour of the Gulf as part of Operation CATALYST. Mal travelled with the ship on his journey and found that the vessel and its crew provided extensive opportunities for proactive collecting.

In September 2009, the Memorial returned to HMAS Parramatta in order to gather further material…

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It has been 75 years since the Duke of Gloucester planted a tree in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial , in memory of all those who fought and died at the Battle of Lone Pine on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 6 August, 1915.

Men dressed in top hats and Boy Scouts from Braidwood, NSW, were among the crowd that attended the planting that warm Spring day on 24 October, 1934. The formal proceedings began at Parliament House, where a ceremony was held to mark the solemn occasion. The crowd then marched slowly through the valley and across the Molonglo River – there was no lake back then – to the site where the War Memorial was to be built, and watched on quiet and dignified as the Duke planted the tree.     

Ray Hasler, a 13-year-old Scout, was part of that historic day. He returned to the Australian War Memorial last Friday to commemorate the anniversary of the tree planting and reflect on the many history-making events that have happened since that day.

Mr Hasler, now of Queanbeyan NSW, served in the RAAF during the Second World War. He was part of the aircraft ground crew stationed in the South Pacific.

He remembers well the day the tree was planted: “[There were] lots of people about, thousands actually. And not a tree in sight, bare as a paddock.”

“It was rather dignified, everybody stood to attention when the Duke moved and when he finished   [planting the tree] they all doffed their hats.”

The tree itself was “about as thick as your thumb, and up to about knee height”. Today, the Lone Pine stands at more than 20metres.  

The tree was propagated from a pine cone that was sent to Australia by Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith, whose brother was killed in the battle for Lone Pine Ridge. Smith’s mother grew two seedlings, one of which was planted at the Australian War Memorial in honour of her own and others’ sons who fell at Lone Pine.

Cuttings from the Lone Pine are now propagated and available from Yarralumla Nursery in Canberra.

Mr Hasler had planned to visit the tree on its anniversary with a mate, Jack Whitfield, who was also a Scout present at the time of the planting. Sadly Mr Whitfield died just weeks before the anniversary.

Australian War Memorial senior historian Peter Burness presented Mr Hasler with a seedling from the Lone Pine, which he accepted on Mr Whitfield’s behalf, and said that he would likely plant it in Braidwood.

“I hope one day, when it’s gone, like we all will be gone, they cut a section out of the butt of this tree and nominate what happened on each ring, each ring suggests a year of growth,” he said.

“There’s 75 rings therein and they all tell a story, and it would be nice to read them.”

Around Australia racing excitement is reaching fever pitch in anticipation of next week’s Melbourne Cup. That day full of champagne, sunlight glinting or raindrops sploshing on the jockeys’ colours, the smell of clods of turf being turned up as the horses pound along …

Back in 1945 a “Pony Race Meeting” to be held on June 16 in Dutch New Guinea was similarly anticipated. It was scheduled to begin at 1330 hours, with eight races followed by a screening of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” starring Bette Davis and Monty Woolley.

Corporal Errol Coates, 82 Wireless Section, had started preparations weeks before. He had trained a Timor pony for the event. These were small ponies about 12 hands high (just over 48 inches or 122 cm). Coates fed his pony on crushed army biscuits for protein. Coates was to ride on the day and like the other jockeys he pulled together his “colours” from borrowed uniform items. An air force or army shirt overlain with someone else’s singlet, with another person’s hat constituted a jockey’s “colours”.

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The Australia-Japan Research Project website has been updated with new contents. 

1. Japanese Midget Submarine attack on Sydney Harbour and its aftermath
The AJRP has conducted a study on the aftermath of the Japanese midget submarine attack in Sydney Harbour in 1942 and the research outcome has been added to our website. Dr Tamura, the AJRP project manager, carried out archival and field research in Australia and Japan to collect material and interview some family members of the submariners. The result is an extensive coverage of the series of incidents in Australia and Japan since the submarine attack up to present. We hope you enjoy exploring this issue on our website, which is primarily in English, but there are some bilingual pages in English and Japanese.

The site has sound and moving image files related to the submarine attack as follows: read on

To celebrate the arrival of ‘Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and beyond,’ teachers passionate about art are being invited to participate in a special learning day in Canberra.

This one day program also includes an opportunity to explore collections in two of the National Capital’s premier institutions – The Australian War Memorial and the National Portrait Gallery.

 Common Ground is a global meet up celebrating the Commons on Flickr.  Many of the organisations which have images in the Commons will be participating in the meet-up, which will take place on the weekend of 2 and 3 October.

The meet-up will be in the form of a projection onto – or within – the participating institution’s building at night (or suitable day-time location) using a slideshow of content from the Commons on Flickr accounts curated by the community.

There are over 400 images in the set, and they are an amazing selection.  There are sad photos, funny ones, cute ones, one that make you think, ones that you will not expect.  Some are in colour, many are black and white.  Some show ordinary people doing ordinary things, some will make you gasp.  They demonstrate not only the differences between the collections from which they are drawn, but also the things that are the same, the common ground. 

Here at the Australian War Memorial, the images will projected on the large screen in our orientation gallery over the weekend.  The Powerhouse Museum and the State Library of New South Wales are joining forces in Sydney, and the State Libraryof Queensland is also taking part. 

In the Northern Hemisphere, the meet-up is on at George Eastman House, State Library and Archives of Florida, the Oregon State University Archives ,  Brooklyn Museum and the New York Public Library and the Swedish National Heritage Board

Read more about the Commons on Flickr, see the Memorial’s images on the Commons, or read more about the Common Ground event in the Collections Australia Network blog.

Update:  If you missed the event, you can still see the images in this slide show on Flickr Commons and read the Common Ground wrap-up on the indicommons blog.