Val Lehman starred as “Queen” Bea Smith in the Australian television show Prisoner, but to the award-winning actress, her grandfather, James Holland, was a star. He fought on Gallipoli and the Western Front during the First World War and is one of the “Lost Diggers of Vignacourt”.

Sir Bertram Mackennal’s sculpture “War”, better known locally as “Bellona”, the Roman goddess of war, was gifted to the Australian Government in 1915 as a tribute to the Australians who fought at Gallipoli.

When Sergeant Edward McMahon played The Rosary on Gallipoli in August 1915, everyone stopped to listen.

From pursuing Russian submarines during the Cold War to the search for MH370, the Orion is one of the RAAF’s quiet achievers. But to Wing Commander Marija ‘Maz’ Jovanovich, it’s like a much-loved old friend.

Private George Giles had just fought in the battle of Morlancourt in July 1918 when a tall, thin man in glasses approached and asked if he could have his uniform and kit. The mud-encrusted uniform is now on display at the Memorial and features in a new highlights audio tour.

When Ethel Freeth was told that her son, Flight Sergeant John Freeth, had been killed during the Second World War, she refused to believe it. She was convinced he had survived the crash and never gave up hope of finding him alive.

The Australian War Memorial has a huge collection of items on paper encompassing Australia’s wartime experience from the Boer War to the present day. The conservation of these important pieces of history is the job of our paper lab team. The paper lab recently received a new acquisition, a drawing by an unknown artist titled “Soldier from the Army Medical Corps” (ART94358)