THE ANZAC MEMORIAL

Evening Star, Issue 22442, 12 September 1936, Page 12

THE ANZAC MEMORIAL

RISING AT CANBERRA A RECORD OF WAR A great grey pile of masonry, standing back against dark, tree-covered Mount Ainslie, excites the interest of all travellers to Canberra (writes Hilda Abbott in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald’). Its oblong shape, high walls, and flights of steps to a door that seems so small in so great an edifice, draw the tourist to investigate. But he may not enter here. Within this solemn, quiet exterior all is as yet confusion, and the harried major in charge has indeed a task before him. Builders are still at work, and men swarm with hammers and cements and trestles and colour-washes, while into this confusion are steadily arriving all the exhibits of the war museums. Enormous cases block your way—long boxes in which are torpedoes, cases, furniture, old mines, great sinister black balls, and mine-sweepers, looking like swordfish, only solid and grey and deadlooking. One goes in, as yet, by the door at the back which opens into the receiving room; and adjoining it is the disinfecting room for all the exhibits before being distributed in the glorious new galleries here. On this ground floor is a grand gallery. Its walls and ceilings are parch-ment-coloured, and its ceiling has massive concrete beams. It is one hundred and ninety-eight feet long and forty feet wide, and on one side has 26 tall widows _ looking out to the soft, timbered side of Black Mountain. Its floor is of concrete, too; otherwise this might be the ballroom of some great palace. When here a few months ago big bales of sisal fibre stood about, and men were at work mixing it with plaster and setting it on great moulds for the handsome cornices of this memorial. Now, behind long lines of packing cases are tables with men and girls at work trying to clerical order at all events. There is a reading room, with long light-bringing windows, and a board room and office, all with parquet jarrah floors. The doors through the ■whole building are of Tasmanian blackwood, and some have one large panel only, and are very mellow and handsome. VAULTS FOR RECORDS. The vaults where books and all historic papers are to be kept remind one of the of Chilon. Fine pillars are here, and treasure house within treasure house for storing of the nation’s records of the Great War. The name of every man who took part will he stored here for ever. When all this shall be in order those who wish may come and read, but the records will not be open to a careless public. A wall has been left open- in one large ground floor room for the entry of Tank 44, now down in Melbourne; and the giant doorway to the widest floor space of all is where aeroplanes that have made our history will come through—and to rest. Here at the moment lies the battered gun that was used at Ladysmith and then at Gallipoli, and, finally, left there, put out of action. It was redeemed from those desolate shores some two or three years after the war. There are neatly builtin caves in the walls, and here modellers and artists are very busily at work setting up again the models of dug-outs, trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, fields of Flanders, with stark tree trunks emphasising desolation, fields of France all sodden and torn.

Beautiful steps of terrazzo, with lines of crusty gold near their edges, lead you to this first floor level. Looking up, one can see the enormous space a great dome will one day cover, giving to this memorial a sacred look; and cloisters will be built on the walls, on each side of a long narrow garden courtyard. There are stately exhibition rooms with stone-grey walls and high ceilings, through which diffused light will fall on the pictures. Bronze glass alternates with white plaster squares, and has been skilfully arranged. Here at the moment an expert is at work cleaning the pictures before they shall be hung on their new walls, and hundreds of great oil paintings and gilt picture frames are huddled about the floors, and mysterious bottles stand on a kerosene box. Peaceful, brightlycoloured scenes of _ Flanders _ lean against Lambert’s realistic landing at Anzac, and excruciating battlefield scenes in France. Portraits of stern generals and colonels wait in a line for their next'formation, and, dominating this scene of scramble, is the great picture of blue sea where the British ships so stately lead the German fleet to Scapa Flow. THE LIGHT HORSE CHARGE. In another hall, where modellers are setting up the Light Horse charge at Romani, small bronze figures of Australian soldiers on prancing horses are massed all higgledy-piggledy _ on long benches do\Vn the room; and in yet another case the battered village of Shemac stands stark against the peaceful blue of the Sea of Galilee, A blank wall seen through a framed wooden ledge has been specially built for the mosaic floor of a Byzantine church, carefully lifted after the Light Horse capture of Shelal. Starry eyes looking from the figurehead of a ship rising from a varied collection on the floor in another room attract you, and you find it is from the German ship See Adler, wrecked on a Pacific Island when her master had put in for repairs during the war. The coats-of-arms from the Emden and from the Melbourne are there, leaning against the wall, and a picture of the Emden just sinking in the sea. Perhaps all these things impress one even more strewn about in disorder as they are now. It makes one think of war and disturbance and wantonness. When the memorial is ready for inspection one will come up the broad steps and go in quiet order through the exhibits from Egypt and Palestine to France, and from the pictures and models to the shells and torpedoes and crude weapons of war housed in the basement. And, standing at this entrance door to what will be the garden courtyard, with pool and cypress trees, one will look down a broad road through an avenue of trees direct to Parliament House steps. No,w one looks across the open plain to the Molonglq’s line of willows, to the rich green foliage of the Parliament park, to the stately white of the Secretariat buildings, and away to dark, pine-clad Mount Stromlo, with its becoming white dome,' to the blue Brindabella Mountains. Soft and deep is their blue, and their topmost peaks, in winter ever-crowned with snow, guide your eyes from this temple to the heavens.