Andrew Rule: Shrine of Remembrance: Inside bitter battle over sacred site’s future
It opened as a solemn place of mourning in a land that had lost 60,000 men and had another 150,000 wounded in the Great War — but now a struggle is brewing about how to “market” Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.
What becomes of the broken-hearted? After World War I, Australia was full of them, their many dead too distant, buried on foreign battlefields far away. So our forebears built monuments.
Every tiny country town had one, but the Shrine of Remembrance was the greatest, a national monument in a state capital. It took seven years and trainloads of stone quarried
in three parts of Victoria.
When it opened in 1934 the Shrine was, in truth, a giant tombstone – a solemn place of mourning in a land that had lost 60,000 men and had another 150,000 wounded in the Great War.
As Patsy Adam-Smith wrote in The Anzacs, the generation raised after that war knew about the Angel of Death because they grew up feeling “the beating of his wings”.
Fathers and sons, husbands and sweethearts, uncles and brothers had been killed in battle or returned as changed men, gripped by bottomless grief, permanent damage and lingering effects of a conflict that altered the world.
Commonwealth war graves were far from Australia and impossible for all but the wealthy to visit. The Shrine let the grieving mourn their loss, and the public honour the missing and the maimed.
Decades passed and the huge crowds that gathered in the Domain for the Anzac Day Dawn Service and Remembrance Day thinned until almost all the original Diggers were gone. But that changed. In the 1990s, the few surviving World War I veterans became revered elders, vanishing heroes for young Australians who started making the pilgrimage to Gallipoli after the 75th anniversary of the 1915 Anzac landing fired the popular imagination.
Since then, World War II veterans have made way for Vietnam veterans and, after that, those who served in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
One of the longer segments on Remembrance Day this Tuesday, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, will be the smoking ceremony and welcome to country, courtesy of paid performers who do the same gig at football games and the like.
There are other changes. The Shrine looks much the same as ever but behind the scenes is a bitter struggle about how to “market” it.
On one side are traditionalists who want its dignity preserved to honour the sacrifice of the fallen.
Against this are politicians and bureaucrats and others who see the Shrine as a prime commercial opportunity ripe to be exploited by the state. Check out the penguins at Phillip Island, photograph graffiti in the city lanes … then “dine at the Shrine”. It sounds like the outline for a tame television tourist show.
The Shrine even has a new logo: Shrine Melbourne. Perhaps it was created by the same international design house that came up with the City of Melbourne’s “M” logo in 2009 at a cost of $240,000.
The logo represents forces that alarm traditionalists. To them, the Shrine is being hawked around, spruiked by entrepreneurs chasing tourist dollars.
This silent struggle between tradition and commerce is now spilling into public view.
The resignation of the Shrine director of public programs last month is the latest in a string of seven resignations this year, including two directors, two managers, the financial controller and two more.
Disgruntled Shrine volunteer guides have formed the Save Our Shrine website, which publishes pointed criticisms of activities promoted at the Shrine under its state government-appointed chief executive Dean Michael Lee, who has a Public Service Medal and a brother-in-law in the army.
Shrine volunteers and many other veterans are angry that last New Year’s Eve, the City of Melbourne allowed the sacred ground of the Shrine Forecourt to be reclassified a “celebration zone”, effectively overturning strict rules laid down in 1934 to preserve the Shrine’s dignity. Worse, say the critics, this allowed a Bollywood dance party run by a DJ named “Mothafunk”.
After the dance party, outraged Save Our Shrine supporters posted a message online: “The event was attended by hundreds – eating, drinking and littering the area.”
Then there’s Dine at the Shrine, part of a deal signed with celebrity caterer Peter Rowland. Dining means wine, ignoring the fact that for 90 years the Shrine’s regulations have banned alcohol. It has no liquor licence and ex-service organisations are not allowed to bring refreshments for get-togethers after ceremonies such as the Remembrance Day service this Tuesday.
One dining “experience” at the Shrine was labelled “A Taste of Combat,” with the chef giving army ration staples a sophisticated twist. The food doubtless tasted fine but the idea, to some, seems in strikingly bad taste.
The Save Our Shrine movement deplores promotion of the Shrine as a tourist venue rather than a place of mourning and reflection.
“Crass advertising that utilises the ribbons from veterans’ medals as its theme is disrespectful to those who have served and who have earnt their medals,” is one published comment of several.
There is more where that comes from and the skirmishes are not over. The current chairman of the board of trustees, former navy officer Captain Stephen Bowater OAM, was appointed in 2021 and reappointed in 2025. The state government twice extended the time limit for expressions of interest but no one else applied. Critics of the current leadership see that as reflecting the Shrine’s reputation.
When crowds gather at the Shrine on Tuesday to pay their respects to elders past and present, one of Australia’s most generous philanthropists and practical patriots will be recovering from his three-times-a-week kidney dialysis.
This is Bill Gibbins AM, the knockabout tycoon who has made it a mission to do as much good as he can while he can – especially in memory of war veterans.
It was Gibbins, cashed up from selling his successful trucking company, who bought the Rats of Tobruk hall in Albert Park in 2007, outbidding a Sydney developer. After the auction, he told the veterans they could use the building as long as they wanted.
He said then: “I thought I’d buy it and let you keep it going, because we owe you a debt that can’t possibly be repaid.”
In 2008, Bill Gibbins was awarded life membership of the Riding for the Disabled Association of Australia for his life-changing support.
In 2018, Gibbins combined his love of racing and horses with his admiration for military veterans by recreating the Jericho Cup, a $300,000 flat race commemorating a race staged as a ruse by Australia’s mounted troops in Palestine in a lull in hostilities late in World War I.
The original race by members of the Australian Light Horse was run over three miles through the desert sands. Dubbed “The Jericho Cup,” it went to a horse named Bill The Bastard, no great racehorse but arguably Australia’s greatest warhorse, and a complete rogue.
The big, strong chestnut known for bucking “like a bastard” redeemed himself by carrying five troopers out of a danger zone under fire.
Bill The Bastard and a black mare named Midnight were two of the 136,000 Australian “walers” who were sent to war and did not return.
It’s unlikely that Midnight ever saw Bill The Bastard, as he was with the 2nd Light Horse Regiment and Midnight went to the 12th with her owner, renowned Hunter Valley horseman Guy Haydon. Midnight died in battle, taking a Turkish bullet intended for her rider.
A book loosely based on Bill The Bastard’s story claims he survived the war and was given to a Turkish family on the Gallipoli Peninsula, an ending so happy it would make a Disney scriptwriter blush.
The real stories behind Bill The Bastard and Midnight are so moving they do not need embellishing. Which is why Bill Gibbins, a man with a big heart and deep pockets, came up with a plan to commemorate Anzac horses and horsemen.
When Gibbins heard the story of the first Jericho Cup run in 1918, he thought of a way to combine good works with a good day at the races. With much work and sponsorship money, he persuaded Warrnambool Racing Club that running a marathon flat race of 4600m over its famous Grand Annual Steeplechase course on the eve of summer would be a grand bookend for the club’s much-loved May races.
The scoffers said his dream of allowing only Australian and New Zealand-bred runners (true to the Anzac spirit) would fail. They were wrong.
Six years on, the seventh running of the “Jericho” on the last weekend of this month stamps it as a genuine drawcard already being compared with the traditional May races.
As a long-distance event that runs up and down a hill and includes three road crossings, it adds another dimension to one of the greatest sights in Australian sport. And it does it at the end of November – almost always warmer and sunnier than in the jumping season, when the Warrnambool weather tends to be as “Irish” as the local racegoers.
At 4600m the Jericho is the longest flat race in Australasia by far, in honour of the gruelling original in Palestine, contrived by “Banjo” Paterson and other Light Horse officers to boost morale and to lull the enemy into a false sense of security before a surprise attack set up to make it look as if massed horses and riders were gathered only for the races.
The plan worked. A century later, so has Gibbins’ bold idea to commemorate those brave men and their game horses. Maybe he should take a look at the Shrine.
Lest we forget.
