Childhood Encounters with Anzac, the Teaching and Dissemination of a Tradition, and the (Re) Invention of Remembrance

Children have always played an important role in Australia’s Anzac story. They have carried the burden of war, they have lived with the legacies of conflict, they have been compelled to learn the ‘right’ lessons of history, and they have reshaped and reinvigorated Anzac’s traditions. Yet children are largely forgotten in Anzac’s historical account and they are marginalised in the debates and discussions about its place in modern Australia. This thesis embarks on a survey of how Australian children have lived with and learned about Anzac, from their families, their communities, and in their classrooms, from the end of the First World War to the Centenary of Anzac in 2015. This study draws on a number of archival collections, such as the National Archives of Australia’s repatriation records, the papers of the RSL and the Anzac Fellowship of Women, parliamentary debates, and school papers and publications. Central to this inquiry is a persistent endeavour to find ‘traces’ of children themselves. Much of the material I have consulted has been rarely used by historians and includes boys’ diaries, photographs, and ephemera from the Young Australia League pilgrimages to the sites of the First World War; dissenting secondary school students’ publications which challenged the Vietnam War and Australia’s culture of commemoration in the 1960s and 1970s; and children’s responses to the 1995 Australia Remembers commemorations. This project has created new archives all of its own. I have undertaken interviews with secondary school students and teachers to capture their experiences of how young people encounter Anzac. This thesis aims to recover young people’s testimony, weave their experiences into the historical narrative, and position their voices more centrally to contemporary discussions about Anzac. I argue they have responded to the call to remembrance in diverse and complex ways