Soul of the nation

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Another sobering statistic is that the average age of the 103,000 soldiers commemorated on the Roll of Honour is 23. The youngest is James Martin, who was 14 years and 9 months…

After a massive $500 million-plus expansion, the Australian War Memorial offers new insight into the nation’s military history and even more reasons to visit Canberra.

Simpson and his donkey are back where they belong. One of the most-loved icons of the Australian War Memorial (AWM), this bronze sculpture of the man who has come to typify mateship and bravery has pride of place in front of the AWM’s new main entrance. In storage during the expansion project, which began in 2020, the statue of 22-year-old Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey helping a wounded soldier at Gallipoli has been a favourite with visitors since it was first displayed in 1988.

Beyond the main entrance, an even greater selection of the AWM’s vast archive of treasures great and small is now accessible to visitors in new museum galleries that opened this year. Those who take time to look closely will learn much about Australia’s history, and it would be possible to spend days exploring and still not see it all. The AWM is a place made to return to.

The stunning Anzac Atrium, with its sweeping sandstone wall sourced from the same quarry as the original memorial building, is dominated by some of the AWM collection’s largest objects, each representing one of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) services. Visitors gaze up at the towering presence of a Black Hawk helicopter used in peacekeeping missions, an Australian light armoured vehicle that served in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade, an RF-111C A8-134 aircraft deployed over East Timor (now Timor-Leste) in 1999, and the HMAS Brisbane guided missile destroyer from the Vietnam and Gulf wars.

Off the atrium, the expansive new Anzac Hall has three major new permanent galleries dedicated to Australian peacekeeping operations, conflict in the Middle East from 1990, and the war in Afghanistan.

There are more than 3700 objects on display in Anzac Hall. About 70 per cent of them are on show to the public for the first time.

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