Commemoration

Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier.

The original unknown soldier was entombed in Westminster Abbey in London on 11 November 1920. His body was selected by a blindfolded brigadier from six bodies recovered from all the major Western Front battlefields. He was assumed to have been British (but could have been a Canadian, New Zealander, or even an Australian) and was intended to represent all young men of the British Empire killed during the Great War. An unknown French soldier was buried under the Arc de Triomphe on the same day and several other allied nations soon entombed unknown soldiers of their own.

Plans for an Australian unknown soldier were first put forward in the 1920s but it was not until 1993 that an unknown Australian was at last brought home. To mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the body of an unknown Australian soldier was recovered from Adelaide Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneaux in France and transported to Australia . After lying in state in King's Hall in Parliament House, he was interred in the Hall of Memory at the Memorial on 11 November 1993. The Unknown Australian Soldier was buried in a Tasmanian blackwood coffin with a slouch hat and a sprig of wattle, and soil from the Pozières battlefield was scattered in his tomb.

The Unknown Australian Soldier represents all Australians who have been killed in war.