The Australian War Memorial is the most visited museum in best places to visit in Canberra/”>Canberra and one of the most visited in Australia. It is also, by a considerable margin, one of the finest war museums in the world. People who go expecting a conventional military history collection — glass cases of medals and old rifles — come out having experienced something quite different: a place of genuine emotional power that does not glorify what it records.
The memorial sits at the northern end of Anzac Parade, with the dome of the main building framed by the Brindabella Ranges. It was designed by Emil Sodersten and John Crust, opened in 1941, and has been expanded significantly since. The building itself is considered one of Australia’s finest examples of Byzantine Revival architecture.
The Hall of Memory
At the heart of the memorial is the Hall of Memory, beneath the Byzantine dome. This is where the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier is located — the remains of an unidentified Australian soldier who died on the Western Front in World War I, repatriated in 1993 and interred here in a ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of Australians.
The hall is lined with mosaics representing the different arms of the Australian military and the qualities the memorial associates with service — resource, candour, devotion, curiosity, independence, and others. The effect of the space — the light, the scale, the silence that visitors instinctively observe here — is genuinely affecting. It is not a propaganda space. It is a space for grief.
The Galleries
The memorial’s galleries cover Australia’s involvement in conflicts from the Sudan in the 1880s through to current operations in the Middle East. The World War I and World War II galleries are the most extensive and the most impressive — both in terms of the quality of their objects and the seriousness of their interpretation.
The WWI galleries hold items of extraordinary historical significance: original Gallipoli diaries, nurses’ letters, fragments of the Western Front landscape brought back as relics. The scale of Australian losses in WWI — 61,000 dead from a population of under 5 million, a casualty rate proportionally higher than any other nation in the British Empire — is made concrete and personal in a way that no statistics alone can achieve.
The WWII galleries include a Lancaster bomber suspended from the ceiling of the main hall alongside an entire Japanese midget submarine captured at Sydney Harbour in 1942. The Pacific War galleries, covering campaigns in New Guinea and the islands, deal with fighting of extraordinary brutality in conditions of extreme hardship — and they don’t soften what they describe.
The Last Post Ceremony
Every day at 4:55pm, the memorial holds a Last Post ceremony in the Commemorative Area. A bugler sounds the Last Post, the name and story of one Australian soldier, sailor, or airman is read, and their photograph is displayed on the Roll of Honour wall. The ceremony lasts about 15 minutes and is free to attend.
This is one of the most quietly powerful things you can do in Canberra. The individual focus — one person, one story, one family — cuts through the numbing effect of mass casualty statistics in a way that stays with you. Bring something to sit on if you want a good view; the area fills up quickly.
Practical Information
The Australian War Memorial is located at Treloar Crescent, Campbell, at the northern end of Anzac Parade. It’s a 10-minute drive from the city centre or a pleasant walk along Anzac Parade from Parliament House — the vista down the parade with the memorial at the far end is one of the great pieces of planned urban scenery in Australia.
Entry is free. Open daily 10am–5pm except Christmas Day. Allow a minimum of two hours; four hours is not excessive for a thorough visit. Free guided tours depart at set times throughout the day — these are worth joining, as the guides have access to stories and context that the labels alone don’t convey.
The café inside the memorial is good. The shop has an excellent selection of Australian military history books, many of them hard to find elsewhere.
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