Wednesday, April 25 was Anzac Day, which means two things: classes were canceled and the country was overridden by men in uniforms. Oh, and a third thing: lots and lots of bagpipes.
Anzac Day was born at the end of World War I, Australia's first big military undertaking since Federation in 1901. Australia was still a member of the British Commonwealth, so WWI saw Australians fighting under the British flag. The day was originally made into a public holiday to commemorate the battle at Gallipoli, where the Australian and New Zealand imperial forces were absolutely decimated by the Turks. "Anzac" stands for "Australia New Zealand Army Corps" and is also what the soldiers were called. Since the vetrans of World War II returned from all over the South Pacific, however, Anzac Day has come to be understood as a day to remember the soldiers who fought in all the wars Australia participated in.
Commemorating defeat with a national holiday is a peculiarly Australian thing to do. The arguement is that its not about the fact that they lost, but rather that they tried. The world, or at least the British Empire, thought of Australia as a backwater colony. The war was an opportunity to prove their worth as a young nation, and despite their utter failure at Gallipoli, there was a feeling that they had. They tried their damnedest, and thats all that mattered for them. What came out Gallipoli and was enshrined in the first Anzac Day was the image of the Australian soldier as brave, unflinching, blunt, and ready for anything. The diggers (slang for soldier) were the Everymen of Australia, capable and fearless, and the ritual of Anzac Day is about labeling those characteristics as distinctly Australian in nature. What is strange about the Anzac legend is that the ideal Anzac (and thus Australian) was put forward as honest, hard-working, hard-drinking, and cynical. In many of the stories written in the Anzac Book, a war-time souvenir that became the basis for the legend, the hero is opposed to the war and only goes because of his loyalty to his friends. There is a strong sense of anti-authority that runs through the Anzac legend, which highlights the irony of the way the state idolizes the Anzac soldier.
But anyway: Anzac Day. The holiday, which has been celebrated every year since Gallipoli, begins with a dawn service. The services usually take place at the various communities' war memorials. Interesting side note: Australia has more war memorials per capita than any other country. Back on track: thirty years ago, with the World War I vets dying and the World War II vets getting increasingly older, attendance at dawn services were down and pundits and lawmakers were spelling the end of Anzac Day. The last fifteen years has seen a dramatic rise in attendance, however, as young Australians find reasons to connect with the holiday. No one is quite sure why, but my friends and I theorized as we watched the pre-Anzac coverage on tv the week leading up to it. Modern nations define themselves through very specific events, often ones that are tumultuous and difficult. Look at America: we only became "Americans" once we made the violent split from Britain in 1776. More subtle but perhaps even more defining, people didn't begin referring to America colloquially as a "nation" until the Civil War. Before we were commonly called a "union," implying a loose confederacy of states voluntarily joining together. The turning point was the Civil War. In his first inauguration speech Lincoln used the word "union" twenty times and never once said "nation." The Gettysburg address, which is only 268 words long, includes "nation" five times and avoids "union" all together. The Revolutionary War made us a country, but the Civil War made us a nation.
All of this is to say that Australia didn't have a defining moment. The British had learned from the American debacle and gradually granted Australia increased autonomy until they were permitted to declare federation in 1901. They had a history of almost engaging in conflict—the 1850s saw a narrowly-averted rebellion centered around the gold rush, the 1880s had a disaffected and mistreated working class coming close to class warfare, and so on and so forth. Australia's history is one of carefully avoided violent encounters, which makes World War I and Gallipoli such a watershed moment. For people searching for a way to define their nationhood, especially in a climate of multicultralism when it seems that anyone can be Australian, this moment of extreme bravery is an opportunity to vocalize "true" Australian qualities. This is just my cynical interpretation, however. One very smart friend pointed out that it MIGHT just be that young Australians happen to be interested in memorializing those who died for their country. I mean, just possibly.
Okay, lecture over, back to the Anzac Day account. The dawn service in Melbourne is held at the Shrine of Rememberence, Australia's largest war memorial and a behemoth of a building. I'm not sure how to describe its architecture style. It has some obvious Roman influences but it doesn't have the smooth elegance of America's neo-classical buildings and monuments. Instead it comes off as this enormous, jutting chunk of rock that dominates the Botanical Gardens, where it stands. Its a very powerful, very masterful building. My class on museum philosophy was cancelled and we were told instead to attend a service, so I pulled myself out of bed at 4:30 in order to catch a tram at 5:00 to make it down to the gardens by 5:30, which is when people were told to show up. It didn't start until 5:45, when the sun began to rise, but so many people were coming that you had to arrive at least fifteen minutes early to get a spot. Here I am right before I left my apartment, appalled that it is even possible to be awake at this hour:
The Botanical Gardens are on St. Kilda Road, past the river. To get there, I would in theory catch a tram on Swanston Street, where I live, and take it straight down until Swanston turned into St. Kilda Road. Unfortunuately, the tram website lied (damn MetLink) and no trams were running that early in the morning, so I found myself walking down Swanston at 5:00 AM, hurrying in the hopes of making it to the Shrine before the service started. Walking down the Australian equivalent of Broadway or Market Street in the pitch dark was quite an experience. There were three easily identifiable categories of people out at that hour: wasted hipsters only now leaving the bars and making their way back to their beds, homeless people, and worried-looking suburban couples who had come in on the trains and were braving their way through the inner city to make it to the service.
As we got closer to the Shrine, the experience grew more surreal. People started emerging from the side streets until there was a crowd of us walking in the dark. People who talked did so quietly, not wanting to disturb the sense of solemnity and calm. It was still pitch dark, mind you, so I'd occasionally hear a swear word or an exclamation as someone tripped on the pavement or barely avoided walking into a tree.
I followed the crowds up the hill to the Shrine and pushed my way closer to the actual building. Because it was dark, I didn't really have a sense of the layout, but I was close enough to hear the speakers and see the entrance to the Shrine.
At 5;45 the service started, and to be honest I don't remember most of it. There were the usual inspirational speeches about the courage it takes to die for your country and waste of young lives lost to war. I can never decide how I feel about these sort of events. On the one hand, everything they are saying about loss and mourning are true. It is horrible that young men and women go out and die before their time. It is tragic that families emerge from war ravaged and forever incomplete. And there are times, I believe, when war is unavoidable and necessary. When not fighting is worse than fighting. But it makes me angry to witness these large, grand events organized around the loss of life, because while 30,000 people might gather at the Shrine to mourn the loss of life, they also end up glorifying it. I hate how manipulated these events make me feel, with their carefully orchestrated torches and bugle playing, and the perfectly timed gunshots. The people who speak at events like this have to practice their speeches, over and over again, and the thought of someone repeating a line about young men crying out to God in the trenches in an attempt to get the emphasis just right, to recall the exact right emotion from the audience, makes me a little sick.
Because I was torn about the rhetoric employed at the service, I ended up tuning out what they were saying and focusing more on peoples' reactions. They were silent, still, for the whole thirty minute service. When the program started it was still impossible to see anything around you, so it was a bizarre feeling to suddenly become aware of your surroundings as the sun rose. I watched people blink and make eye contact for the first time, realizing suddenly that they had been standing a foot away from a total stranger for the last thirty minutes.
Here is the shrine right before the gunfire salute, as the light was just beginning to touch the building and people were emerging from their own private headspaces:
And here is a blurry shot of the Shrine at the end of the service, as we all watched the Lord Mayor and Premier of Victoria climb the stairs and lay wreaths at the center of the Shrine:
Now do you see what I mean about a weirdly intimidating pagan temple?
The actual service is extraodinarily short and is followed by something called "the gunfire breakfast." The armed services association, called the Royal Serviceman's League (RSL) sponsors a big breakfast cookout. We all queued up in front of army tents outfited with stoves and burner while servicemen and women served eggs, toast, and bacon. By the time I got to the breakfast the line was already a couple hundred people long, and so when I made it to the tea and coffee station, which is only half-way to the food station, I grabbed my mug of tea and four Anzac biscuits and hightailed it out of there.
Sidebar on Anzac biscuits: supposedly the food of choice for embattled Australian trench soldiers, Anzac biscuits are possibly the second-best thing to come out Australia since forever (the first best thing being the Tim Tam. And yes, all my Australian-loves are food-related, is that a problem?) They are crunchy, oaty, buttery, brown-sugary goodness and I love that a) a national holiday REQUIRES that they be consumed, and b) they were essentially being shoved down my throat by soldiers at 7 AM, and this is somehow not considered utterly bizarre by the people of this fair nation. I now return you to your regular broadcast.Because I am inexplicably obsessed with this building, here is another shot of the shrine as I waited for a tram on the road outside of the Botanical Gardens. If the building is boring you, please note the large numbers of people streaming out of the park. It is 7 AM and they all woke up three hours ago to make it for a thirty minute state service. Thats some crazy dedication, folks. Also, they probably didn't stuff their pockets full of Anzac biscuits like a certain American co-ed, so they really are suffering.
As I walked up St. Kilda Road towards the river (after waiting in vain for a tram to come) I saw this young man and his father.
He's interesting not just because, hey, look at that, dude wearing an Australian flag, but because apparently, Australians don't do this. In one of my less riveting classes, Australia Now, we talked earlier in the semester about how Australia isn't a very patriotic country, at least not in the way Americans are used to thinking of the term. The populist, ground-swell shows of support that are so prevalent in America - flags on porches, bumper stickers, gaudy t-shirts and baseball caps - aren't part of the Australian landscape of representations of nationhood. Or, at least, they weren't. Recently, however, there have been more and more cases of Australians, usually young people, making blatantly patriotic fashion statements such as this. Its so suprising and new that pundits and politicians have made a big deal out it, writing articles and giving speeches about this nascent form of Australian national pride. The discussions about this all revolve around a single issue, though: is this an organic movement concerned with inspiring a love for Australia through its symbols of nationhood, or is it further proof of the "Americanization" of Australia, that even their expressions of patriotism have to be borrowed from the US? I don't know what the answer is, but what I find most interesting about this whole "wearing your patriotism" debate is that the people who are wearing the Australian flags are usually tattooed, peirced, hip young types. That sort of national pride would never come from edgy urban youth in America, which makes the situation here all the more complicated, and, I think, more organic.
I made my way over the river onto Swanston Street, stopping at the crosswalk in front of the Flinders Street Station (my favorite building in Melbourne!). As I waited for the light to change, I spotted this man and quickly snapped a photo of him:
I really don't know what to make of him, but I'll explain what I do know: the flag he's wearing is the Aboriginal flag, designed in 1971 as a rallying symbol for the wide and varied Aboriginal tribes to unite behind in their fight for civil rights. Here's where it gets complicated, though: one of the reasons people think Anzac Day has become so popular in recent years is because of the political and historical complications of the other huge national holiday, Australia Day. Australia Day commemorates the landing of the First Fleet, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, which put into port at Sydney Cove and set up the Colony of New South Wales on January, 26, 1778. Historically celebrated widely throughout the country, by the mid-20th century Aboriginal Australians and those sympathetic to their history began to criticize Australia Day for celebrating an event that, for the indigenous people, marked the beginning of the end of their way of life. Many people referred to Australia Day as Invasion Day or Survival Day and marked it as a day of mourning. The debate around the national holiday went on for such a long time that people began to look for another way to commemorate their nationhood. This disillusionment with Australia Day contributed to some degree to the popularity that Anzac Day is now experiencing. Australia Day is still a large holiday, but the Australians I've talked to don't see it as their defining historical moment.
But just as Australia Day is exclusive, so is Anzac Day. The people Anzac Day commemorates, the soldiers in the two World Wars and Vietnam, were by and large Anglo male Australians. It is inherently an exclusive holiday, celebrating the contributions of one group of people without making mention of the women and indigenous people who weren't allowed to fight for Australia or of the countless immigrants who come from the very countries Australia was at war with. The man wearing the Aboriginal flag was also carrying a bottle of whiskey, stumbling around talking to himself, and looked a little worse of wear, so I have no way of knowing his motivations for wearing the flag. Still, I think he is an important symbol, one that shows that the problems raised by Australia Day—the issues of who shapes national history and whose story is privileged over others'—don't disappear just because the primary national holiday has changed.
But back to the Anzac proceedings: As I trudged my way back up to my apartment, the bars around me began to fill with people. It was still only 7:30 in the morning but that didn't stop those returning from the dawn service. Anzac Day is about a lot of things: that quinessential Australian ideal of "mateship," queen and country, war; but its also about drinking a lot, for a large portion of the day. I had a feeling that many of the people I saw pouring into the pubs were planning on grabbing a pint, finding themselves a seat at the bar or a spot of wall to lean against, and not leaving until they were kicked out by managment at midnight. I however, had a different plan: my four Anzac biscuits, while delicious, were not enough to sustain me, so I set out to find raisin toast and a cup of tea.
After my breakfast at a cafe (which took me FOREVER to find, because apparently there is some cosmic law that demands that for every bar and pub open in Melbourne a comparative number of cafes must be closed) I returned to Swanston Street intending to fall into bed until noon, only to find myself caught up in the crowds watching the annual Anzac Day Parade. It started a block above my aparment, so I got to witness rows upon rows of soldiers preparing to march their way down to the Shrine:
My favorite group was the bagpipe battilion, because I covet their kilts and tassled knee-socks:
But my absolute favorite person was an older gentleman who stood near the end of the parade, dressed in full World War I regalia with his sword raised the entire time. He had a thick pointed mustache and a bear-like build, and when I saw him I said the first thing that into my head, which was, "wow, he looks JUST like Kaiser Willhem!" Which was, of course, exactly the WRONG thing to say at a parade commemorating the Allied involvement in World War I, but oh well. We have the fabulous Berkeley public education system to thank for that little slip. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries right before I saw him, but believe me when I tell you he was a sight.
At the parade I ran into my friend Sarah, who had just woken up. She was planning on following the parade down to the Shrine, but I bowed out - two trips to the war memorial before 9 AM was more than I could handle. So we each went on our merry way: her to the Shrine, me to my bed.
The rest of the day was fun as well: my friend Danny organized an Anzac Day scavenger hunt that had us running around the city, snagging pictures with men in uniform, stealing memorabilia, kissing people, harassing football fans, and taking more shots than I care to remember at bars that I simply can't remember. It was a blast, but we didn't use my camera so (thankfully) I have no footage of it. I will tell you that we didn't win, but thats because the boys cheated and swam the Yarra River, a feat worth so many points that there is no way we could catch up. However, if we'd managed to get pretend-arrested, we would have beaten them hands-down. We were suprisingly close to it, too—Lauren and I had almost sweet-talked a cop into booking one of us before his supervisor found out.
So that was my Anzac Day, more than a month late. I apologize for the length, and the college essay quality to the writing, but I wanted to get these ideas down as much for myself as for you. I'm fascinated by the ways in which nations express their identity and choose moments that they feel define them, and how those moments are re-interpreted by each successive generation as something different. Also, I'm hoping that next April 25, when I'm chilling out at Emory and Australia is just a series of fond memories, I'll read this and remember what a bizarre, strange, fun day I had. Maybe I'll even rustle up some Anzac biscuits.
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