The Anzac Legend: Framing Australian Identity

The construction of Australian identity in the nation’s cultural imaginary remains shaped by its continued engagement with the Anzac legend. I explore the Anzac legend in terms of Benedict Anderson and Irving Goffman’s theorizations of the nation as an ‘imagined community’.[1] This ‘imagined community’ comprises individuals who might never be known to one another, yet they share an act of imagination by which they identify with each other.[2] Australians as an ‘imagined community’ identify themselves with the myth of the Anzac ‘digger’. This collective shared social reality traces a lineage that connects the Anzac and digger-nationalism with male bonds of homosocial mateship, egalitarianism and the loci of the bush and war. David Coad proposes that “in Australia homosociability has led to the institutionalisation of the mateship myth celebrating ties of friendship, loyalty and camaraderie between men”.[3] The Anzac legend connects with traditional masculine signifiers of Australian identity such as the iconic bushranger, squatter and sporting hero. Digger-nationalism prevailed because it dispelled pre-First World War Australian cultural and national anxieties by helping to shape Australia’s collective national identity separate from the British Empire. This justified white Australians’ illegitimate belonging to the ‘Great Southern Land’ that forged a compelling foundational historical narrative for white Australians.

Prior to World War One, Australia was an anxious Anglophile and sycophantic nation. As a relatively new state, Australians felt insecure about their cultural heritage and their relationship with the British Empire and the rest of Europe.[4] Australians’ involvement in the Great War was their principal confrontation with a European history and modernity.[5] Gallipoli was an extension and confirmation of Australia’s presence in the international community. Chroniclers of the First World War did not invent a mythology of the Anzac; rather they expanded upon earlier notions and imagery of the Australian bush legend.[6] Australian collective memory is anchored in the fantasy of migration to and across a national landscape identified by its apparent unique present and mythical past.[7] The Anzac legend can be traced back to the romanticism of colonisation and the Australian bush.[8] Russel Ward states that prior to the First World War “The bushman is the hero of the Australian boy”.[9] Australia was founded by patriarchy and it is often symbolically represented as a young boy, reminiscent of a young nation. Stereotypical representations of the ideal Australian bushranger: tall, tough, laconic, hard-drinking, hard-swearing, hard-gambling , independent, resourceful, anti-authoritarian, manual labouring, itinerant, white male were attributes that provided the foundation for the Anzac digger legend.[10] Hoffenberg posits that ANZAC soldiers’ feelings of anxiety, fear and adventure in the First World War mirrored that of Australia’s first convicts and settlers suggesting a contemporary return to the authentic and ‘original’ Australian.[11] Peter Hoffenberg proposes that the First World War provides a more compelling and engaging foundational historical narrative than convict settlement.[12] Furthermore, Alistair Thomson surmises that the qualities fostered in the bush were immortalised in war.[13]

Australians have an enduring connection to the Anzac legend because of their embedded assumed relationship with their landscape.[14]Lorenzo Veracini validates this theorization and describes it as the settler fantasy whereby colonizers, displaced from their ‘motherland’ have attempted to legitimate themselves as ‘Indigenous’ on native land.[15] Australia’s experiences at war has informed the Anzac legend, which in turn has been significantly influenced by this settler fantasy. Hoffenberg states that:

The Anzac myth incorporates seemingly authentic Australian narratives about the harsh landscape and travel to and through that harshness. The voyage sometimes ended in death and burial, whether in the outback or at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. The Anzac legend enables Australians to overcome the pathos of diaspora and embrace patriotism.[16]

The construction of this myth supports Goffman and Anderson’s understandings of national identity as a cultural construct sustained by a nation’s shared social reality. The mythologizing of the Anzac experience was part of the process of cultural decolonization, a self-conscious effort to imagine a new political future for ‘Australians’ by appealing to a shared non-British past.[17]

C.E.W. Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, had a significant impact on the formation of the Anzac legend and its legacy in contemporary Australian society. Bean’s reportage dispelled previous national identity anxieties and expanded on the bush legend. He noted that “the big thing in the war for Australia was the discovery of the character of Australian men”.[18] His writing on Australian national character, the bushranger mythology, and social experience in Gallipoli was a catalyst for the development of the construct of the digger.[19] Masculinity was imbued in notions of Australian ‘character’.[20] The Anzac legend is a culmination of the experiences of professional Australian soldiers and those of the digger: a volunteer citizen, a temporary bearer of arms and ‘an ordinary bloke’. The digger tradition is characterised by anti-authoritarianism, mateship, larrikinism, arrogance, aggressive nationalism, sardonic humour and a nonchalant attitude to death and injury. [21] Kapferer states that “The Anzac tradition expounds the doctrine of the Australian male egalitarian virtue of mateship”.[22] Lloyd Robson describes the stereotypical Australian solider as “a classless army; they stuck to their mates through thick and thin; [and] their burden as soldiers was lightened by a sardonic sense of humour”.[23] Bean’s description of the digger/Anzac character validated larrikinism as a unique and endearing cultural trait.[24] Anzac soldiers have become a symbolic embodiment of Australian nationalist imagination and their experiences, particularly at Gallipoli, are a celebration of collective identity popularised as Australianness.[25]

Anzac is a deliberate ideological construct which in collusion with the digger tradition operates hegemonically within Australian society.[26] Bean’s commentary on the landing at Gallipoli and Australian soldiers’ efforts during the war highlight his persuasive social construction of an Anzac tradition.[27] He eulogised Gallipoli campaign on 25April 1915 as “the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born”.[28] Language used to describe the Anzac experience naturalised the battlefield of Gallipoli and enabled Australian identity to transcend physical and psychological borders and boundaries.[29] Bean’s historical journalism contains both factual reporting and imagining.[30] Elements of Gallipoli and the Western Front, both historical and fictional, were woven into an epic narrative of heroism, sacrifice and patriotism.[31] Mythologizing of history can be detrimental to understandings of our collective past and pending future. Bean’s reportage transcended the grim realities of the experiences at Gallipoli and failed to acknowledge returned soldiers’ schizophrenic sense of public identity.[32] Bean’s construction of the Anzac legend fails to address social and political complexities of Australia’s past and present.[33] This is not to undermine the sacrifice made by Australian soldiers during the First World War, and subsequent conflicts that have become entangled in the development of the Anzac legend. I concur with Cranitch that the Anzac legend enables Australian people to feel comfortable in myths and non-sustainable notions of nationhood rather than forcing them to identify with new symbols and values.[34] Nevertheless, Bean’s empiricism in chronicling the Anzac experience has enabled future generations of Australians to enter his mythic reality, re-embody Anzac ideals and regenerate a nation established on the Anzac legend.[35]

Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing at Gallipoli. This historical occasion has been elevated above all other national events and stories to embody Australian values and character. Characteristics of the digger have become embroiled in Australian identity. The recognition of these traits and their cultural significance to individuals’ sense of shared belonging has become embedded in the liturgy of Anzac Day. Moreover, Anzac Day commemorates the cataclysmic magnitude of the destruction and loss of life at Gallipoli and the Western Front. Bruce Kapferer states that it is this mourning which underlies much of the importance of the Anzac legend and its role in the national psyche.[36] Similarly, Hoffenberg proposes that the Great War was “not only the loci of catastrophe necessary to define a national community, but also the crucible for their distinctive national identity”.[37] The experiences of combat in Gallipoli and Western Europe during First World War altered Australia’s collective history and this is reinforced by Australians’ homage to the Anzac legend.

Anzac Day was celebrated thirty years ago as a quiet intimate affair. The conscription of young Australians into the Vietnam War created dissidence toward the Anzac legend. As a result there was a self-reflective critical analysis of Australian soldiers’ experiences at war and its effect on Australia’s national values and character.[38] Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli reinterpreted the 1915 campaign and reignited public interest in the plight of the diggers in contemporary Australian culture: “In the story of the Anzac lies the emotional locus of Australian narratives of nation”.[39] Not only did the film embody the ideals of and character of Australian national character: mateship, larrikinism and heroism but it also created an imagined sense of inclusive national identity.[40] Weir’s film and subsequent television series and government campaign ‘Australia Remembers’ once again popularized the Anzac legend.[41] Hoffenberg notes that it is cultural praxis, such as a sense of collective adventure, migration and pilgrimage, which underpins modern nationalism.[42]Indeed, Australians continue to embrace soldiers’ experiences at Gallipoli as positive values and attributes that all Australians should embody and aspire to.

Fiona Nicoll notes that indicative of the compassionate revival of the status of the Anzac legend the number of visitors to the Anzac Memorial in the early 1980s doubled that of the previous decade.[43] This number has significantly increased over the last ten years with young Australians making pilgrimages to Gallipoli to mourn and commemorate Australian soldiers’ contribution to the First World War. Hoffenberg proposes that pilgrimage can be physical or imagined; convicts, Anzacs and even ‘battlefield’ tourists to Gallipoli conflate social memory, “mystifying historical distinctions” providing the foundations for an ‘imagined community’.[44] This creates a sense of togetherness and endorses good citizenship.[45] It is a pervasive cultural cliché that the Gallipoli campaign was the occasion when ‘the Australian nation lost its innocence’.[46] Catriona Elder argues that the confluence of the Anzac soldier and the contemporary backpacker dispenses the digger icon of its definitive meaning and instead renders it a mix of youthful naiveté and the thrill of travelling the world. This imagery invites an over identification with the Anzac- digger legend.[47] Nevertheless, it increases the significance of the Anzac legend in Australian society and enables Australians to connect with and participate in ‘national myth-making’.[48] Bruce Scates cites the experiences of several Australian backpackers at Gallipoli and notes a revival of patriotism in this post-Vietnam generation[49]: “We really got the feeling of how the Aussies got shafted by the British”.[50] A traveller’s reflection further valorises the formation of the Anzac legend in reaction to Australia’s pre-war colonial – national insecurities. Despite Scates’ claim that perhaps the journey to Gallipoli has “more to do with tourism and consumption than it does with pilgrimage or history” he finds that Australians increasingly experience a sense of debt to Anzac soldiers who fought and died. This has become merged into an intergenerational collective national memory.[51]

The Anzac legend has a stranglehold over Australian public life and has forged a compelling foundational historical narrative for white Australians by creating an imagined community offering Australians a nexus for collective memory. Despite criticisms that the Anzac legend is a rigid and archaic cultural practice that is detrimental to healthy national development it is nevertheless a compelling mythology that attempts to unify disparate social and ethnic groups by identifying their cultural capital and national identity as a specific framing of Australianness.