Memorialising Gallipoli: Manufacturing Memory at Anzac

Abstract

The memorials of Gallipoli have not lost their power to move, confront and often even inspire their visitors. Their meanings are re-visited, even re-invented by each successive generation of Anzac pilgrim and, contrary to the simplistic mono-dimensional readings of some historians, the Peninsula’s commemorative landscape remains a site of fierce contestation. Pacifist and patriot, back packer and bereaved all interpret it differently. Moreover, the memorials of Gallipoli continue to alert us to different cultures of commemoration; Christian, secular and Islamic, Turkish, British, French and Australian.