Lockdown’s crop: the wartime relics being unearthed in our homes

Stuck at home during the pandemic, we’ve unearthed thousands of wartime relics - a windfall for the Australian War Memorial.

After the Christmas we’ve just had – disrupted travel, testing fiascos, ever-changing rules and record infections – talk of Covid silver linings feels very 2020. So let’s just call it a fortuitous by-product of the pandemic: stuck in our homes, going all Kondo, we’ve sorted through boxes and files and unearthed thousands of forgotten treasures that help piece together historical fragments of our nation.

Journalist Sue Smethurst calls it “the great Covid cleanout”, and a beneficiary of this has been the Australian War Memorial – some 50,000 pieces of wartime memorabilia have been offered for donation during the pandemic. Letters describing notable events, a final goodbye to a loved one... these small things are often important to the bigger picture. And it makes you wonder, in the decades ahead, how will these Covid years be remembered?