The Silent Sentinel: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape

On 4 August 1920, the sixth anniversary of the day the government of Australia committed its people to war on the other side of the world, a memorial was unveiled in the town of Gladstone, New South Wales, to the men of the district who had gone to that war and died, and to the men who had gone and returned. The local paper gave this account of the ceremony: In the heart of Gladstone township stands a silent sentinel. It is the figure of an Anzac, with grounded arms, carved in white marble. From its pedestal it overlooks the main streets of the town as if guarding the liberties of the citizens as they were guarded on foreign shores. A more fitting memorial of the heroic dead and the honoured returned soldiers could not bc. 1