ANZAC Day and Secular Pilgrimage

Tourism Recreation Research

ISSN: 0250-8281 (Print) 2320-0308 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrr20

ANZAC Day and Secular Pilgrimage C. Michael Hall To cite this article: C. Michael Hall (2002) ANZAC Day and Secular Pilgrimage, Tourism Recreation Research, 27:2, 83-87, DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2002.11081224 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2002.11081224

Published online: 12 Jan 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 116

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtrr20 Download by: [University of Canterbury]

Date: 11 March 2016, At: 04:55

TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH VOL. 27(2), 2002: 83-87

Research Note This section is devoted to research notes, conference resumes and other significant research events. Two copies of write-ups, not exceeding 1,000 words, may be mailed to the Section Editor, Associate Professor Ross K. Dowling, School of Marketing and Tourism, Faculty of Business, Edith Cowan University, ]oondalup Campus, WA 6027, Australia. In all cases, one copy of the report should be mailed to the Chief Editor, TRR .

•

Downloaded by [University of Canterbury] at 04:55 11 March 2016

ANZAC Day and Secular Pilgrimage C. MICHAEL HALL Professor and Head, Department of Tourism, University of Otago, P.O. Box: 56, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

ANZAC Day, the 25th of April, is probably Australia's most important national occasion. The acronym ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and ANZAC Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. On 25 April 1915, a combined allied force landed at the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in an attempt to defeat Turkey and improve access between British Imperial and French forces in the Mediterranean and the Russian forces in an effort to hasten the end of the war. Unfortunately, the operation was poorly planned and executed with the Turkish forces being far more capable than the British had expected. The allied forces occupied Turkish soil from 25 April1915 to 20 December 1915. Of the some 50,000 Australians who fought at Gallipoli, 8,709 were killed and 18,235 wounded; New Zealand suffered 2,701 fatalities and 4,880 were wounded with the majority of deaths and injuries occurring at what is now known as ANZAC Cove on the western side of Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turkish forces also suffered huge losses with an estimated 86,000 deaths (Winter 1994). The idea that some sort of 'blood sacrifice' was a necessary rite of passage or initiation ceremony in the birth of a nation was common in the late Victorian and Edwardian period (Phillips 1999). In Australia, April25 was officially named ANZAC Day in 1916. In that year it was marked by a wide variety of ceremonies and services in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a march through London and a sports day in the Australian military forces camp in Egypt. In London, over 2,000 Australian and New Zealand troops marched through the streets of the city (Andrews 1993; Winter 1994).

©2002 Tourism Recreation Research

During the 1920s, ANZAC Day became established as a national day of commemoration for the 60,000 Australians who died during the First World War. With symbolic links to the dawn landing at Gallipoli, a dawn stand-to or dawn ceremony became a common form of Australia's ANZAC Day remembrance during the 1920s with the first official dawn service being held at the Sydney Cenotaph in 1927. In New Zealand a half-day public holiday was gazetted on 5 April 1916, and church services and recruiting meetings were proposed. However, returned servicemen preferred a public service conducted by an army chaplain rather than individual church services because it was seen as a dilution of the 'ANZAC spirit'. In 1922 the New Zealand government declared April25 a full public holiday as if it were a Sunday. By 1927 all six Australian States observed some form of public holiday on ANZAC Day. By the mid-1930s all the rituals associated with the occasion in present-day Australia-dawn vigils, marches, memorial services, reunions, sly two-up games-were firmly established as part of ANZAC Day culture (Phillips 1999). In New Zealand, however, the dawn parade, commemorating both the time of the initial landings at Gallipoli and the routine dawn 'stand-to' in the trenches, was not officially introduced for ANZAC Day until1939. In both countries the use of the word ANZAC is strictly controlled, further enshrining the ANZAC myth and the sacredness of ANZAC Day (Sharpe 1981; Oarke 1994; NZ History Net 2000). In both Australia and New Zealand ANZAC Day is recognised as one of the most important days of nationhood and national identity. For example, the spirit of ANZAC remains central to Australian and New Zealanders' self image. This was not because of a military victory but

Research Note


because of the manner in which the Australian and New Zealand troops performed on the battlefield and supported each other in what has become known as the spirit of mateship, particularly in relation to the myth of the bush or outback (McGregor 1966; Hall1985). For example, at the 2000 ANZAC Day service at Gallipoli, the Australian Prime Minister told the largely youthful crowd at the 85th commemorative dawn service: We come ... to obseroe not only a dawn, but a dusk ... Soon the story of ANZAC will pass gently from memory into history. Soon its record, once written on pages wet with tears, will be ours alone to guard, ours to cherish, ours to live. Tt is a remarkable legacy ... History may choose to chronicle the Battle of Lone Pine as an unsuccessful military feint ... but to us, it will always be about young Australians, exactly like those with us here today (Grattan 2000: 1).

"Country life in Australia became the mystic symbol of a chance for regeneration ... Yet the manner in which it was evoked suggested very strongly that true purification could only be obtained through a ritual of hardships endured in solitary communion with Australian nature" (Powell1976: 101) or through the hardships of war. Indeed, the bush myth also became the source of most of Australia's folk heroes: the Wild Colonial Boy (a convict), Ned Kelly (a bushranger), the Man from Snowy River (a horseman), and the Digger (the ANZAC soldier). The bush myth and the entwined myths and images of larrikinism, mateship, and hardship were represented in Peter Weir's internationally acclaimed movie Gallipoli released in 1981 (Gammage et al. 1984). These images have continued to be portrayed and reinforced in the film character Crocodile Dundee, which has confirmed the strength of the myth of the bush in the Australian national psyche. Such strong images of popular culture have ensured a permanent position of the ANZAC spirit within Australia's national identity (Back 1995). Tt is also the source of that mythical 'real' Australian who is known so well: a tall, lean, sun-tanned, slow-talking character with a chip on his shoulder, who hates authority, is luyal to his

mates, stands up for the underdog and believes that any man

is as good as the next if not a damn sight better. He is a seminal pioneering figure, and no doubt this is how many Australians

like to think of themselves (McGregor 1966: 18-19).

As well as national identity, the ANZAC experience has strongly contributed to a sense of nationhood. In 1915 Australia was a new nation, less than 14 years old and the creation of the ANZACS was the first time Australians from all the former colonies had come together to form an Australian army, having previously fought as individual colonial forces during the Boer and Crimean Wars. Furthermore, it should be noted that New Zealand had been a party to the talks that led to the establishment of the Australian federation, and even now the Australian 84

constitution has a clause that provides for New Zealand to become a member of the Australian Commonwealth. One of Australia's leading poets, Banjo Paterson, perhaps best known for Australia's national folk song, Waltzing Matilda, wrote an open letter to the troops in 1915, a poem he titled We're All Australians Now which had two stanzas stating:

From shearing shed and cattle run, From Broome to Hobsons Bay, Each native-born Australian son, stands straighter up today. The man who used to "hump his drum", On far-out Queensland runs, Is fighting side by side with some Tasmanian farmer's sons And which concluded And with Australia's flag shall fly A spray of wattle bough, To symbolise our unity, We're all Australians now Finally, ANZAC has also led to a close cultural, political, and economic relationship between Australia and New Zealand in military and celebrative terms. Since Gallipoli, Australians and New Zealanders have fought alongside each other in the Western Front and during the Sinai-Palestine campaign in the First World War, in Greece, North Africa, and Italy in the Second World War, and New Zealand and Australian infantry companies combined to form an ANZAC battalion during the Vietnam War. More recently, Australians and New Zealanders have served alongside each other in United Nations peacekeeping duties in East Timor (Phillips 1999). This introduction is important for non-Australians and New Zealanders to understand such a national day of commemoration and its contribution to pilgrimage. The pilgrimage of ANZAC Day is not a religious one, although ANZAC commemorative services do have religious overtones, nor is it the pilgrimage of a migrant returning to an ancestral home in search of a cultural identity. Instead, ANZAC is related to a secular pilgrimage of national identity in which the myths of nationhood are paramount. Such pilgrimage has importance for both domestic and international travel. In domestic terms ANZAC Day in both Australia and New Zealand is commemorated by increasing attendance at services and parades. For example, in Sydney, the 2000 ANZAC Day "began with an unprecedented pilgrimage in wet, cold darkness as more than 10,000 people made their way to the Cenotaph in Martin Place, which marks the site of the city's main World War I recruiting office" (Hill2000: 1). Later 150,000 people lined the streets Tourism Recreation Research Vol. 27, No.2, 2002

Research Note

of Sydney to watch more than 20,000 marchers-an event repeated in 2001. All Australian and New Zealand cities and towns have reported increasing tum outs to ANZAC services and parades.


In terms of international travel between Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey, ANZAC is also significant. For example, in Turkey in 2000, it was reported that between 10,000 and 15,000 people heard the Australian Prime Minister address the dawn service at Gallipoli (Grattan 2000; Hill2000). Similarly, from a New Zealand perspective The 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in 1990 (coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi) attracted immense interest. An official delegation, led by the Governor-General and including a Gallipoli veteran, and a host of Australian and New Zealand tourists attended an emotional ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli. Since that time many New Zealanders have made the 'pilgrimage' to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day, with nearly 3000 Australians and New Zealanders being present in 1997 (NZ History Net 2000)

The notion of pilgrimage is also utilised by the travel industry in promoting travel to Turkey by Australians and New Zealanders, especially at the time of the ANZAC Day commemoration. For example, ICTurkey (2001) notes that its ANZAC tours are included with other pilgrimages with the website claiming 'icTurkey' s passengers paid the lowest for the best ANZAC Pilgrimage'. Several other tour companies, such as ANZAC House (2001), Down Under Travel Agency (2001), and First 48 Tours (2001) also specialise in catering to younger Australians and New Zealanders travelling Europe often as backpackers. The secular pilgrimage to ANZAC Cove may even be enmeshed with religious pilgrimage. For example, ICTurkey (2001) includes its ANZAC pilgrimage with a range of other Jewish and Christian pilgrimages to Turkey, while Harvest Pilgrimages (2000: 38), Official Tour Operator for the Great Jubilee, 'pay tribute and pray for these souls of the heroes of those tragic months of 1915' in their guided tour to Gallipoli. Similarly, the Royal British Legion operates visits to Commonwealth war cemeteries through its pilgrimage (Royal British Legion 2001) department while Australian government departments have also run pilgrimages to visit war graves (Reid 1995). The attendance at the annual combined nation dawn service and related national services is now so great that both the Australian Embassy in Turkey and the Australian Commonwealth Department of Veterans Affairs warn of the traffic congestion in the area and the heavy demands on accommodation. Indeed, so great is the demand that many Australian and New Zealand backpackers sleep in their sleeping bags on the beach (Grattan 2000) with Tourism Recreation Research Vol. 27, No.2, 2002

thousands of travellers, mainly Australians and New Zealanders, travelling to