Curtis, Katina: War Memorial redevelopment will force Anzac Day ceremonies to move

Have your say with the National Capital Authority on the Memorial’s ‘early works’ application. You don’t need to live in Canberra. Arguments here.

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Katina Curtis

War Memorial redevelopment will force Anzac Day ceremonies to move‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 2021 (pdf from our subscription)

Looks at ceremonial impacts of War Memorial project, particularly due to need to move the Stone of Remembrance for some years. Also quotes opponents of the project, Clare Cousins (Australian Institute of Architects), David Stephens (Heritage Guardians), Stewart Mitchell (former Memorial officer).

Cousins referred to the current early works application and said, ‘It’s completely underhanded, it’s completely inappropriate. ‘None of these things should be proceeding until the whole project has got the green light, and it doesn’t.’

Stephens said ‘if the authority approved the early works and then found the rest of the project didn’t meet its criteria, “you’re stuck with having agreed to it. The three big things – demolish Anzac Hall, massacre 100 trees and do a huge excavation at the front – are not preparation in the same sense as putting up a fence is. They’re things without which the project could not happen.”‘

Mitchell ‘says the removal of the trees and the planned new entrance and parade ground were “an extraordinary change to what was a uniquely Australian and dignified site” that would transform it into a “formalised, hard surface, even quasi-military. The sense of isolation of the main building in the landscape, that memorial, is really important.’

Curtis’s article was also in The Age and the Brisbane Times. It attracted a number of reader comments.

Earlier coverage of the campaign against the War Memorial project.

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