Australian High Commission

Canada

Address: Suite 710, 50 O'Connor Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 6L2 - Tel: 613-236-0841 - Fax: 613-236-4376

ANZAC DAY 2010

Remarks by the High Commissioner

Ottawa

25 April 2010

Today we mark Australia’s first great military engagement and its greatest military
defeat. It was an event that has done much to define our country, and to shape its
identity and the spirit of the people.

Ninety five years ago the Anzacs - the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps -
landed on Gallipoli Peninsula, with the aim of seizing that ground and forcing the
Dardanelles, the ambition was great. At the culmination of the campaign, a mere eight months, the forces were evacuated, its military objectives unfulfilled.

But despite that - and perhaps because of it - Gallipoli has become part of our
consciousness as a nation. Whether we’re religious or not, that place represents
something which goes beyond our normal lives.

Anzac is an Australian legend that has a roughly analogous place that Vimy Ridge has in the Canadian psyche. Both are stories of young nations encountering the horrors of modem warfare for the first time - wars fought with repeating rifles and machineguns and appalling casualty rates. Wars that represented massive and unprecedented change.

Those eight months at Gallipoli were tumultuous times. Never during the war was
tenser effort concentrated - or so momentous an issue fought out - in such a narrow
theatre. Never in history was a campaign richer in pure heroism and self sacrifice.
For the people of Australia and New Zealand, their most intense feelings were centred on Anzac Cove during those momentous eight months.

Every man, woman and child was tied to those few acres of Turkish hillside, either by personal affection and interest or by a new born pride in their nation. The conflict had brought Australia and New Zealand to the attention of the world. While their forces were relatively small, they had played a part which might have done much to mould the issue of the war.

For those few months, the interest of the whole world had converged upon these
soldiers and on the British, French and other troops that fought beside them, including the Newfoundland Regiment.

Not until later in the war did the troops from the far flung bastions of the British
Empire again have the opportunity of exercising so direct and powerful influence on
the course of the struggle.

But the cost was great and the tragedy massive. Men - many of them no more than boys - lived and suffered and died on the beach and in the foothills around Gallipoli.
Many lives, fuelled by a desire for adventure, would have been sustained there during those terrible times by memories of home — of baking heat, the buzz of cicadas, the screech of cockatoos and of cold beer and cricket.

The values that we see as the best of what it means to be an Australian — laconic,
irreverent, tough, but also quick to laugh and quick to offer help where it’s needed — those values were tested at Gallipoli in ways almost too terrible to comprehend. And those boys were not found wanting. They left their mark and their legacy lives on today prouder than ever.

One of those legacies is the bond between Australia and other nations at the battle.
Most particularly, it forged an even close link with our brothers across the Tasman, as well as with Britain, with France and other countries.

It also reinforced the connections between Australia and Newfoundland and more
broadly the people of Canada. Those links were once again strengthened in tragedy during the great battles on the western front in the war, in places like Passchendaele and Ypres, where our troops fought side by side.

More than 8,000 Australians were killed, more than 2,500 New Zealanders of a
horrific total for all forces of more than 130,000. All of those victims and all those
who have served their country in time of war, remind us that the relative peace that we now enjoy has only been made possible by their blood and sorrow.

We also pause today to reflect on our contemporary military engagements, most
notably in Afghanistan, where once again Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians are giving their lives for their friends and for peace. There can be no greater gift and it
is that spirit that we commemorate today, and that we must never forget.