ANZAC
ANZAC Day and a multipolar world: what “lest we forget” means now
On ANZAC Day 2026 I remember the ordinary diggers behind the legend and reflect on Australia’s place in an emerging multipolar world, from Gallipoli to today’s conflicts.
ANZAC
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ANZAC Remembrance and Peace
On this day I share the text of a speech given by the New Zealand Governor General The Hon Dame Silvia Cartwright from Wednesday, 25 April 2001: "Nga mate nga aitua ka tangihia e tatou i tenei wa. Haere. Haere. Haere. The dead, those we mourn, we lament them
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Remembrance Day 2012
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" These words from Horace have survived since ancient times. Yet more often nowadays we read it in other contexts like: or Wilfred Owen's excoriating Dulce et decorum est: "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come
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ANZAC 2012
I don't think that many romanticise war too much these days. And there is something very poignant and compelling about seeing the fruits of war. In northern France and Belgium the unimaginable scale of loss wrought upon so many families in the great wars of the twentieth century
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ANZAC Day: remembering some ordinary diggers, not famous, not important #ANZAC
Another ANZAC Day and another day to remember the sacrifices made by Australian and New Zealand forces. Those who serve in battle never get off lightly, even if they manage to survive seemingly unscathed. This year I remember some family members - Claude and Tim from Crows Nest, and Henry
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Flanders mud is pretty bad too
Recently I visited the site in Flanders where John McCrae wrote the famouns pomen In Flanders Fields. It is at the Essex Farm Aid Station only a few kilometres from Ieper (aka Ypres). I visited on a cold, muddy and miserable day. The concrete bunker where the medicos triaged the
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The Somme really does have sticky mud
I have taken some time out from business meetings in Europe to make something of a personal pilgrimage in the steps of my ANZAC ancestors. It has been a very moving and very sombre experience. To see the tiny spaces of land fought over in World War 1 that resulted
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Traveling around Northern France - following tracks of Australians in World War 1
Since I am traveling around there is not always the time or the internet access to blog as often as I would like. Instead I'm sharing links to resources that are guiding my journey via Pearltrees: http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp
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Remembering 11-11
Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,— Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones? Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own. Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp; Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone, The
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ANZAC - a New Zealand view
A good example of the fellow feeling across the Tasman for ANZAC day and all that it means is the speech by the New Zealand Governor-General, Dame Silvia Cartwright, at the 2004 ANZAC Day Dawn Service: "The presence of so many children and young men and women at ANZAC
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ANZAC 2010 - Mapping our ANZACS
It seems appropriate this ANZAC Day to share a good online resource. Thus I commend to people the Australian National Archives site called Mapping our ANZACS. It provides a way to browse 375,971 records of service in the Australian Army during World War I according to the person’s
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For the Fallen 11.11.2009
In Australia we commemorate our veterans with The Ode. It comes from a poem by Laurence Binyon called For The Fallen, and seems appropriate today: They shall grow not old, As we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them, Nor the years condemn. At the going down