On the importance of the commemoration of the Centenary in Australia

In the collective Australian imagination, Australia was born as a nation on 25 April 1915 on the beaches of Gallipoli during the landing of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) in the Dardanelles1. It was not so much the 60,000 years of Aboriginal presence or the start of the colonisation by the British in 1788 or even the federation of the States in 1901 which symbolise the founding of the nation state but really the fighting alongside the troops of King George V, as part of the invasion of a distant land – The Ottoman Empire – which was an ally of Germany during the Great War.