Cirrus@Austlit

'Each year about one million visitors walk through the imposing entrance to the Australian War Memorial to pay homage at the shrine to the digger legend. It is a shrine of massive proportions on which the dominant society in Australia lavishes a large annual budget. It is also a shrine which reflects an almost exclusively white Australian view of the national war effort. Far fewer people visit the nearby memorial to those black Australians who helped defend their country. In sharp contrast to the Australian War Memorial, this modest memorial consists of a simple plaque affixed to a boulder in a piece of untouched bushland. And where is it? If one were to imagine the Australian War Memorial as a north Australian homestead, this memorial to black servicemen and women would be the woodheap - 200 metres out the back door towards Mount Ainslie. Not surprisingly, those visitors to the Australian War Memorial are unlikely to come away with the belief that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (not to mention other visible minorities within the Australian community, like Chinese Australians) have a legitimate part in the digger legend. The galleries of the War Memorial contain few reminders of the military service of Aborigines and Islanders though, to be fair, their number and prominence is slowly growing.' (Source: Abstract)