Our photographers have been active around the Australian War Memorial, updating us on the $548m (and counting) redevelopment program. Photographs were taken 26-30 June, early August, early September, and December 2024, February 2025.
Update 19 February 2025
Director spruiks the Big Build to the tourist industry. A special emphasis on recent veterans.
Update 8 February 2025
The Memorial’s new entrance area is opened by the Prime Minister. He also spoke at the Last Post Ceremony. ABC interview with Memorial Chair and Director. Memorial media release with detail about the new entrance and videos.
Shane Wright piece in SMH and The Age with mostly unfavourable comments from readers. Most of the unfavourables focussed on the extravagance of the project and that the money could have been better spent on veterans’ welfare. Rossco, for example, said, ‘Surely the money could have been allocated to the welfare of returned soldiers instead of this extravagant remake of an already beautiful monument’ (Respect [thumbs up] 30).
Honest History (with handle ‘admin’) was one of a few asking about the Frontier Wars:
Meanwhile, the Memorial backpedals quietly from its previous commitments to properly recognise and commemorate frontier conflict, in which possibly as many First Australians died defending Country as there were uniformed Australians who died defending their country in our overseas wars. The new entrance continues the old Anglo-Celtic ‘remembrance of our brave Diggers’ trope [Laurence Binyon Ode, Napier Waller 15 values, pictures of war memorials across the country] that has been pretty much unchanged since 1941. We know more about our wars now than we did then and the Memorial should reflect this front and centre. What some of us have called the Frontier Wars are better called The Australian Wars – the wars of dispossession on which modern Australia was built – while our other wars are better called Australia’s overseas wars. (Respect [thumbs up] 19)
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4 February 2025
Work in progress on the new Anzac Hall at the rear of the main building (supplied)
December 2024 (updated 8 February 2025)
Honest History is now based in Melbourne but we had a quick visit to Canberra on 30 December and took photos.
We trudged across this space from Limestone Avenue towards the Memorial then took the photo looking back. The overwhelming impression from this perspective is the breaking of the old link between the building and the forecourt. This is broad, treeless space, with the Memorial appearing as an afterthought, half-hidden from below by the new bladed wall, behind which is the new underground entrance.
The proportions are all wrong: too much concrete, too much red gravel, too many banks of seating space, not enough Memorial. The Stone of Remembrance (‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’) sits isolated in that broad space like a pie-cart outside the MCG; that’s it in the middle left of our snap.
The downgrading of remembrance in favour of performative commemoration, even celebration, is the clear result. Dignitaries and the hoi polloi mobile phone snappers will have uninterrupted (apart from waving flags) views of the Anzac Day and other marchers, to the lively beat of various bands.
Military buffs and Australian Defence Force recruiters short of recruits will also love all that space for marching and display. But less visitors than previously may find their way from performance outside to remembrance inside.
Tourists will love the parades but if they turn up on a day when there are no parades they will wonder why there is so much space. Perhaps new parades will be put on specially for them. There are lots of possible days.
The Oculus from above (October 2024)
If visitors go inside, it will mostly be via the new underground entrance. Above, the original doors (redesignated the ‘ceremonial entrance’) now look rather like the tradesman’s entrance. The traditional first view through this entrance of the Memorial courtyard – Pool of Reflection, Roll of Honour, Hall of Memory, and Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier – will be replaced by a first view through the new underground entrance of lots of space and features as described in the Memorial’s media release of 5 February.
Once inside, visitors on that lower level will be able to look up through the oyster-like oculus, a structure which viewed from below is a mathematical inversion of the Memorial’s dome but which from above provokes the question, ‘However will the Memorial keep it clean?’ The stairs leading from the Parade Ground to that upper, ‘oculus-looking-down’ level have a narrow and slippery tread and look and feel hastily or cheaply finished, with crosses here and there marking flaws needing remediation.
Further out, the grass between the areas of concrete has the occasional weed. The replacement trees will look great in a couple of decades, if they survive. It will be a hot, broiling space on Remembrance Day and windy and cold at the Dawn Service. Perhaps the Memorial will supply (sponsored) cabanas for the former and heaters for the latter.
Our Canberra photographer had visited earlier in December and found areas clearly in need of tidying up, building works notwithstanding: oxidisation and faded poppies on the Roll of Honour; ugly railings and plywood covers here and there; netting obscuring detail in the Hall of Memory. Here’s a snap.
Remediation needed to Memorial roof
June-September 2024
The Anzac Parade facade of the Memorial, lit up in a garish way never envisaged by CEW Bean*, and rather reminiscent of Brasilia Airport at night or perhaps of Leni Reifenstahl’s visions of Germany in the 1930s.
View from Mount Ainslie, showing new Anzac Hall taking shape
Memorial management has always insisted (for example, here) that the southern facade of the Memorial will remain unchanged by the redevelopment. Really? Compare that with the pre-redevelopment facade in the next picture.
Work on the Bean Building, to the right of the main entrance.
‘Pull up a bollard!’ A famous line from The Goon Show (BBC Radio) of many years ago; some elements of the Memorial’s Big Build have been a worthy subject for satire.
Beyond the bollards.
*‘[It should] … not be colossal in scale but rather a gem of its kind’ (Bean and the Australian War Museum Committee, 11 October 1923, on the proposed building and collection).
5 July 2024 updated 8 August 2024, 7 September 2024, 28 January 2025.
I’d like to elaborate on my post from last year.
I’m sure the former Commonwealth planning bodies, the Federal Capital Commission (FCC) and the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) would not have approved this redevelopment.
Part of the Griffin plan included the 3 axis roads: Kings Ave, Anzac Pde and Commonwealth Ave.
The Memorial’s original entrance lines up with those of Museum of Australian Democracy (MOAD) and Parliament House, which completes the central axis.
The recently completed stone steps and the retaining walls on either side break that continuous line.
This effectively sidelines/diminishes the original building. The Memorial is too far removed from the parade ground.
The foregoing would have been contrary to plans implemented by either the FCC and NCDC.
Appalling works to date. The changed facade forms a barrier instead of the open vista and deliberate link with MOAD and PH.
It’s contrary to both good planning and design, and should never have been approved by the National Capital Authority.
Clearly, it’s a case of mismanagement from the beginning.
The AWM wasn’t broken, attracted the most tourists to Canberra before the redevelopment was even thought of.
The AWM is well and truly broken.
Dreadful