Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance
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Early morning view from the Second World War Forecourt; located in Kings Domain on St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Australia Designed by architects Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop who were both World War I veterans, the Shrine is in a classical style, being based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and the Parthenon in Athens. The crowning element at the top of the memorial's ziggurat roof references the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. Built from Tynong granite.
The Ray of Light ceremony is central to the experience of the Shrine of Remembrance. A ray of natural sunlight passes through an aperture in the ceiling of the Sanctuary and falls onto the Stone of Remembrance over the word “love” (Greater love hath no man) at precisely 11.00 am on 11 November each year. This is the moment when the armistice was signed in 1918 marking the end of hostilities in the First World War. The ceremony is now reproduced every half hour using electric light to allow all visitors to the Shrine to experience it. Frank Doolan, the surveyor of the Shrine, and astronomer, Dr Joseph Baldwin completed the arduous calculations to position the aperture with the help of the government. Decades later, Doolan solved the problem presented by daylight saving by inserting two mirrors within the aperture’s shaft.
Located adjacent to Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance, this Memorial commemorates the thousands of Australian lives lost during the fighting at Ypres (or Ieper in Belgium) during WWI. "Wipers" was the British and Empire soldiers' appropriately-named corruption of Ypres. During the five battle campaigns around the town and Passchendaele from 1914 to 1918, "Wipers" literally became a stalemated meat grinder for both the Allied and German armies.
One of the four groups of statuary which mark the corners of the Shrine by Paul Raphael Montford
The Ambulatory, comprised of the side aisles surrounding the four sides of the central Sanctuary, contains the Books of Remembrance, National flags and ensigns.
Located on the Shrine of Remembrance grounds, the man with the donkey by sculptor Wallace Anderson, an iconic image of a stretcher-bearer with his donkey carrying a wounded comrade, epitomises the courage and compassion of the Australian soldier.
Four of these are located on the main stairs leading up to the Shrine's Sanctuary.
In the centre of the Crypt stands the Father and son sculpture created to honour the courage and sacrifice of two generations of Victorians who served and died in the First and Second World Wars. It is symbolic of the service of many Victorian families, in which the father served in the First World War (1914-18) and the son in the Second World War (1939-45).
Bronze statue by William Leslie Bowles of Sir John Monash Memorial, installed 1950. Monash is considered one of the best Allied generals of the First World War and the most famous commander in Australian history.
The sanctuary receives light from a skylight in the centre of the distinctive stepped high ceiling and a feature of the space is the ray of light designed to fall across the sunken Rock of Remembrance at 11am on Remembrance Day.
The Devanha Lifeboat No.5 a restored relic from the Gallipoli landing on display at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance.
The Ambulatory, comprised of the side aisles surrounding the four sides of the central Sanctuary, contains the Books of Remembrance, National flags and ensigns.
Dougal Stewart has served in East Timor and Afghanistan. He was deployed to Afghanistan in November 2008 with 1 Commando Regiment as part of Special Operations Task Group Task Force 66. He lent his helmet to Australian artist eX de Medici, who incorporated it, and helmets from other conflicts, into a series of works exhibited in 2011 under the title Need Head. In eX de Medici’s work, the helmet takes on an unexpectedly organic quality, like an insect’s exoskeleton. The helmet is a symbol of protection, but also reminds us of the vulnerability of the head it contains, and recalls the artistic tradition of painting skulls in still lifes as a reminder of our mortality. The label ‘O POS NKA’ denotes that the wearer has O Positive blood and no known allergies: vital information in an emergency. On loan courtesy of Dougal Stewart