Today, Saturday 11 November, marks 30 years since the Unknown Australian Soldier was interred at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Remembrance Day 1993.
Director of the Australian War Memorial, Matt Anderson, said the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier has become a powerful place for the nation to gather, to pause and to remember all those who have lost their lives in war.
“The Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier sits at the heart of the nation’s commemorations,” he said.
“People from all walks of life, from all over Australia, and from all over the world visit the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier to pay their respects to an Australian of unknown rank, birthplace, background or battalion.
“That one man has come to mean so much to so many is a credit to those with the vision to bring him home. As Prime Minister Keating said at his internment, and is now inscribed on the tomb: ‘He is all of them and he is one of us.’”
The Unknown Australian Soldier was recovered from Adelaide Cemetery, near Villers-Bretonneux in France, and transported to Australia 30 years ago.
After lying in state in Old Parliament House, the Unknown Australian Soldier was interred in the Hall of Memory on 11 November 1993.
He was buried in a Tasmanian blackwood coffin, on which were placed a bayonet and a sprig of wattle. Soil from the Pozières battlefield in France was scattered in his tomb.
In 1993, then Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered his famous eulogy describing the Unknown Soldier as “a reminder of what we have lost in war and what we have gained”.
“We do not know this Australian’s name and we never will. We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, or precisely how and when he died,” he said.
Australian War Memorial Senior Historian Craig Tibbitts said, “The identity of the Unknown Australian Soldier is unknowable and will remain unknown, and that’s the way it should be.”
“Because of the scale of the First World War, and its unprecedented level of destruction, for a substantial portion of those killed, their remains were either unidentifiable, or their bodies remained missing.
“The Unknown Soldier is one of approximately 20,000 of Australia’s unknown war dead from the First World War. He had nothing on his person to identify him.
“This symbolic burial of this individual represents so many who were lost overseas, so far away from home.”
