Soldier on Gala Keynote
Speech given by Mr Matt Anderson PSM, Director, Australian War Memorial for Soldier on Gala Keynote Address, 1 April 2023.
Dhawura nguna, dhawura Ngunnawal.
Yanggu ngalawiri, dhunimanyin Ngunnawalwari dhawurawari.
Nginggada Dindi wangirali jinyiin
I pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet, and to their Elders, past and present.
And, as we do every evening, I welcome those who have served, those still serving, and the families who love and support them.
Thank you for having me this evening.
I am always honoured to be asked to speak, particularly to veterans and their supporters.
But Soldier On holds a special place among support services because it grew organically from the experiences and the needs of modern veterans.
Veterans recognising a need in their own community and filling that gap.
I’m thrilled to be here tonight, with Lou, in support of this great organisation.
First, some housekeeping. I encourage you to take part in the auction this evening.
The Australian War Memorial has offered a prize; a Director’s tour for 8 people including laying a wreath at the Last Post Ceremony. This is accompanied by limo transportation and dinner.
Second prize is two tours with me as your guide.
Even without the prize, I encourage you to come and visit the Memorial. You will see it undergoing a once in a generation transformation.
When I started at the Memorial, in April 2020, the galleries for modern conflicts- that is, everything since Vietnam – could be crossed in 15 of my paces.
That’s the Gulf Wars, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan and peacekeeping, in a space the size of a little over half a tennis court.
Australia has had peacekeepers in the field every day since 1947. In fact, Australians were part of the very first group of UN military observers anywhere in the world. 63 peacekeeping missions in over 30 disputed countries or territories.
We do such a beautiful job of telling the stories of the First and Second World Wars. They are nuanced galleries, touching on all aspects of the conflicts; the political landscape, weaponry and technology and most importantly, the people.
We weave together stories based on LTOs, large technology objects, like tanks with tiny, fragile objects like a sweetheart brooch to transport visitors to a time and place outside of their experience.
Our mission, is leading remembrance and understanding of Australia’s wartime experience.
It might surprise you to know who visits the War Memorial.
Only about 10 percent of our visitors are veterans, and roughly 20 percent know someone who has served. The overwhelming majority have little or no firsthand knowledge of war and its consequences.
The magic of the Australian War Memorial – and its point of difference with every other memorial or museum in the world – is that we are a Memorial; a Museum; and an archive.
Through understanding gained in the galleries or our archives – or exploring our collection and stories on-line before a visit - our visitors arrive at the Commemorative Area and the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier with a better understanding how and why a name came to be placed on the Roll of Honour.
It is then, and only then, that the majority of our visitors are able to commemorate meaningfully the service and sacrifice of over 2 million women and men who have worn our nation’s uniform over the past century, and the 103,000 who paid the highest price.
We do this exceptionally well for past conflicts.
On a daily basis, I tell visitors there is an unbroken thread that winds from the Ascot Landing Boat in the First World War Galleries, to your signatures on the Tarin Kot Wall.
You have stories to tell, and they should be told in the Memorial.
Frankly, you are owed nothing less and have waited long enough.
I am pleased to report we are making progress.
We have completed our early works, excavating nine and half thousand trailer loads of dirt from the site. That’s 50 Olympic swimming pools!
There are now 2 cranes towering over the well-loved dome – named by local school children as Duffy after one of Simpson’s donkeys, and Teddy after Teddy Sheean VC- and we are starting to come up out of the ground.
Because I remember how much we all loved drill, I’m pleased to report I aim to have you back on the new parade ground for the ANZAC Day march next year.
We will have finished the Southern Entrance and the Bean Building, Research Centre and Central Energy Plant by the end of 2024. ANZAC hall and the Glazed Link or Atrium will be finished by the end of 2025.
And it will all be heated and cooled by the Southern Hemisphere’s largest geothermal heat exchange system. I’m going to save nearly $1million dollars per year on my gas bill, and more importantly, I won’t be putting 1000 tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent into the atmosphere.
When we poured the first concrete for the new footings, I was joined onsite by several veterans. There was no media, just a few mates who wanted to mark the rising up of the new space that will house their stories. They laid a few small items in the foundations.
That to me, spoke volumes. It tells me that we are doing the right thing, because the people whose stories we will tell inside the building want to be part of it, right from the beginning.
You should know this Development is being built for veterans, and by veterans. We are proud to have a strong Veterans in Construction Program. Contractors seeking major construction contracts with the Memorial are required to detail “Veterans’ Engagement Approach” as part of the tender process.
The approach is working well, with veterans both new to the industry and more experienced, working in all aspects of the build.
Of course, we’re also gathering content for our future galleries. More than 1000 veterans and currently serving personnel have provided interviews, donations and other information on their experiences to our curators.
Capturing these stories “in your own words” is how we are going to build authentic galleries to share their, and your, experiences with the broad range of visitors we see every day.
We are also at the point in developing the content of these galleries that I can share some of what will be going in.
The Gallery Development process is an incredible journey.
For the new galleries in Lower Anzac Hall - Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Peacekeeping – we started with 9051 items for potential display. We have worked that list down to 2317 items. It will include a FA-18 Classic Hornet, M113 APC, Kiowa, RHIB, UN Landrover, and LRPV and a Bushmaster.
In Upper Anzac Hall we started with 3026 items for potential display and have landed on a final list of 594 items that best tell each story.
That includes the large and small (Avro Lancaster, V2 Rocket, Me 109, Me 163 Komet, 75 Squadron Kittyhawk from Milne bay, with captured Japanese Hago tanks, the two Japanese midget Submarines and the guns of HMAS Sydney and Emden for example).
There are 290 items for Australians in Bomber Command alone, including the return of the much loved G for George. George is our most requested item for visitors and I eagerly await the day we will bring him back out for public display.
Alongside George, we have also recently announced the inclusion of the Chinook helicopter. Chinooks have served in both conflict and humanitarian operations. Between 2006 and 2013, hundreds of personnel served over 11 rotations with eight Australian army Chinooks in Afghanistan. More recently, Chinooks have been used in humanitarian operations, assisting with the flood recovery efforts.
This particular helicopter, Chinook CH 47 D A15 202 - The Centaur - was one of the first Australian aircraft deployed to Afghanistan and completed 4 rotations, a total of 513 days. It was damaged in 2009 by enemy fire during a troop insertion. Captain Michael Whitney, the pilot was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his actions during the event. The aircraft was retired in 2016 and brought into the National Collection.
It will feature on the upper floor of ANZAC Hall.
Its ramp will be down, and it is my intention that veterans and their families will be able to sit inside it afterhours. To be alone with their thoughts or simply with each other.
Commemoration through understanding.
We will also display Debbie, a bushmaster being driven by Private Matthew Clarke, of MTF 5. Debbie – also known as Echo 21 Alpha – when it suffered an IED attack on 10 July 2012.
We will recreate her condition immediately after the IED strike – as a life sized diorama – and are currently trying to recreate everything from the patrol order, including, quite literally, the kitchen sink that she had on the roof when the Italian T6 ant-tank mine and 20 litres of fuel in a yellow palm oil container was triggered.
Commemoration through understanding.
The takeaway here is that we are doing all of this preparation, all of the planning, and all of the construction work, while remaining open.
I cannot describe adequately the pressure that puts on teams who continue to do their “normal work” plus contribute to the Development. Of course, we have taken some people off line and they are working exclusively on the Development. But many staff are doing both. It’s all hands on deck.
But we also have a commitment to the public and specifically, to people like you, to be open, every day, 364 days a year. I am governed by an Act that says it is my duty to make the National Collection available. I intend to keep doing that.
The one part of the Memorial that will not be touched during the Development is the Commemorative Area.
Now, when I say untouched, I mean there are no planned renovations.
But working in a heritage building is a special privilege. Renovating a heritage building is next level challenging. We are finding many surprises in the latent conditions of the building that we are repairing and shoring up as we go.
Remember, the Memorial was conceived in 1916, opened in 1941. With a fixed price of GBP 250,000, she was built during the Great Depression. And they cut corners.
Those corners they couldn’t cut, they filled with asbestos or lead paint!
We will leave the building in a better, stronger state than we found it.
But there are no planned changes to the Commemorative Area. This means we can continue to hold a Last Post Ceremony every night. For those who have not been, the Last Post Ceremony is a simple ceremony. Every night we have a bugler play the Last Post and we tell the story of one individual from the Roll of Honour.
Because as much as we honour their death as a consequence of their service, we also must remember who they were when they lived. They deserve that. And so do their families.
I was asked tonight to not only speak about the Memorial, but to let you know a little about me – because if you were expecting Brendan Nelson, I must apologise. I get that a lot!!
I opened tonight by honouring those who have served, those still serving, and the families who love and support them.
Every time I hear this, I am reminded of my own experience, and how important it was for me to feel supported by my family when I was on Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands, in Afghanistan, and in other duties.
Lou, my wife of 31 years and who is here with me tonight, is the mother of our 3 beautiful children and has endured 21 moves (10 of them involving international uplifts). My children have been to 10 schools in 5 countries. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a family to allow each of us to serve in our own particular way.
I have subjected my family to dengue and malaria, to civil unrest in PNG and Solomon Islands, to cyclones and to an 8.3 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in Samoa.
And I’m reminded of the demands placed on Lou and the kids when I was in Kabul in 2015-16. That equated to six three month rotations. Each time I prepared to deploy, I was aware of the rising tension. Each time I facetimed from Kabul, or wherever I happened to be in Afghanistan, I was aware that I was an intruder – there’s never a right time to call – and when I was home on decompression leave, I had to tread lightly. Lou had established the family’s battle rhythm, and my job was to not disturb the equilibrium. Made harder for the fact Lou was – and still is in DFAT – so we needed a code when things inevitably went bump in the night in Kabul.
No point in me pretending there wasn’t a complex attack under way or rocket attack near the Embassy – Lou would read the cable. I simply needed her to know what had gone down, its proximity to the Embassy or my staff, and that I was both ok and dealing with it.
I am proud to have served, both in uniform and a suit.
When I look out my office window, and see the progress of the Development, when I speak to a veteran, a family member, or someone who is touched by their experience at the Memorial, I remember why I am doing this.
Other than being a husband and a father, Director of the Australian War Memorial at this time in its history is the most important thing I will likely ever do.
I look forward to welcoming you to the new spaces at the Memorial, but please, don’t wait until then.
You are welcome anytime.
It is your war memorial, and soon, it will be telling your stories.
Thank you