Sculpture Gardens of the Australian War Memorial

From January 1999 the Sculpture Gardens of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra has been dedicated to past and present service men and women.

Throughout the grounds are major sculptures and busts including memorials to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, Australian service women, Australian Merchant Seamen, Bomber Command, and Sandakan. The most well-known sculptures are Peter Corlett’s “Simpson and his donkey 1915” bronze statue and the bronze figure of Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop.

Simpson and his donkey 1915

Peter Corlett sculpted the 2 metre high bronze statue in Melbourne in 1987-1988. John Simpson Kirkpatrick, known as Simpson, an English-born Australian, was a stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli. The statue shows him with an injured and bandaged soldier on a donkey as they travel to safety.

Sir Edward Weary Dunlop

Ernest Edward Dunlop, born in Australia in 1907, was enlisted into the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1935 with the rank of Captain. He served in Jerusalem, Gaza, Alexandria, Greece, Crete, Tobruk, and in Java in the Pacific. When the island fell to the Japanese, he became a prisoner of war. From 1943 he worked in Thailand and the Burma-Thailand railway, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He died in Melbourne in 1993.

The Lone Pine and Bellona

An Aleppo pine tree was planted in the Memorial grounds in 1934 from a pine cone taken by an Australian soldier, Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith, at Lone Pine ridge in Gallipoli in 1915. The soldier’s mother grew the tree and presented it to the War Memorial. Today it is over 20 metres high. Next to the pine tree is Australian Sir Bertram Mackennal’s 1906 bronze sculpture called War, although better known as Bellona. Made in England, it was gifted to Australia in 1920. Bellona was the Roman goddess of war, and she is depicted with a helmet incorporating death’s head.

Animals in War

Sculpted by a number of artists, including Bertram Mackennal, at the War Memorial in 2009, the stainless steel, bronze, concrete, and granite statue of a horse’s head was a joint project with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The horse’s head is the only remaining fragment from the original Desert Mounted Corps Memorial installed in Egypt in 1932. It was destroyed by rioters in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. A new memorial was designed and unveiled in 1968 in Canberra.

Sandakan Memorial

Anne Ferguson sculpted the Sandakan Memorial in 2005 from granite, sandstone, and glass to commemorate the 1,787 Australians who died in Borneo in 1945. Only six men survived. Designed as an accurate sundial, it has four steps and engraved lines with sunlight reflected through the glass.

Currently, to October 17, is the display, inside the War Memorial, entitled Nurses: from Zululand to Afghanistan. Australian nurses, over the past 100 years have served in conflict and peace-keeping operations. The display commences with the first known Australian in the Zulu War of 1879, and includes personal stories of Army, Air Force, and Navy nurses.

http://www.awm.gov.au/visit/sculpture-garden/

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).