Local complications: Anzac commemoration, education and tourism at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance

Anzac Day commemorates the ‘service and sacrifice’ of Australian military personnel since the end of the First World War. It falls on 25 April, the date of the 1915 landing at Gallipoli, a military defeat popularly regarded as a generative moment of Australian national identity. Located in the urban centre of Melbourne, the Shrine of Remembrance is one of the most heavily visited war memorial sites in Australia, with over 100,000 people expected to attend the ceremony to mark the centenary of Anzac in 2015. While the history, contemporary politics and social impact of Anzac has been subject of sustained scholarship, much less research has been done on the spatial aspects of Anzac commemoration and its relationship with Australian identity. This chapter focuses on the Shrine of Remembrance, investigating what role it has played in shaping how the ‘Anzac story’ is understood and experienced by visitors to commemorative events at the Shrine. It considers the historical use of the site and its surroundings alongside contemporary first-hand accounts, asking how the history and built environment of the site have conditioned commemorative rituals, and through these ceremonies, the Anzac narrative itself.