High Commissioner Joanna Adamson’s Address

On

ANZAC DAY 2013, Christiansborg War Cemetery, Accra - Ghana

Dear friends

Thank you for joining us this morning at our ANZAC Day service in Accra. I was last at this service in the Christiansborg cemetery in 2009. Here now as High Commissioner for Australia, I plan to be present each year of my assignment for Australia to West Africa.

Australians and New Zealanders gather on this day every year, to remember our dead who have fallen in war. It is the anniversary of the day in 1915 when soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli. Our forebears fought a desperate campaign, and it was mostly futile, except…

Each year the commemoration of ANZAC Day begins with dawn services throughout New Zealand. Then it is Australia's turn. And so it goes around the world. Wherever we find ourselves, Australians and New Zealanders, and whether we are many or few in number, we take our moment for commemoration.

This year is the 98th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. At Gallipoli itself, a few hours ago, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders took part in the commemorations, as they have again and again in recent decades. There too, commemoration expands to acknowledge the sacrifices borne in 1915 by Britain, India, France and Canada in the same place – and,above all, the loss of so many young Turks defending their homeland.

After 98 years it is plain to all that whatever the idea behind the Gallipoli campaign might have been, the way it was carried out was terrible, a steady progress to disaster.

But from the defeat some positive have emerged. These have kept ANZAC Day as the day for our commemorations.

We learnt then, and we remember today, that regardless of military skill, it is human values which can take us beyond our normal selves. Most of the soldiers we send to war are, on the whole, very ordinary people. Very many from Australia and New Zealand have been volunteers. At Gallipoli they showed, in horrible circumstances, values of mateship, courage, equality, self-sacrifice and loyalty.

Our respect for them was not extinguished by defeat. Instead, we have drawn on their example for 98 years now.

At Gallipoli too it is said that we, Australians and New Zealanders, understood that we had grown beyond our modern beginnings as colonies of Britain. A new sense of national identity was coming. In 1914 our soldiers left home as British colonial troops. Those who returned came back as Australians and New Zealanders.

At Gallipoli too was born the 'spirit of ANZAC'. The values we recognise, each ANZAC Day, are values we share, we Australians and New Zealanders. We will act together to defend ourselves, our values and our common interests. Our joint commemoration each year reminds us of that.

Here in West Africa there are resonances aplenty with our experience. In World War II, young Africans from the British and French colonies joined the global conflict. Thousands from Ghana and other territories in West Africa took part in the British campaign to recapture Burma. Australians fought in that same campaign. This year marks 70 years since work began on the Burma – Thailand railway, where some 12500 prisoners of war died, including more than 2800 Australians.

Others from French territories in Africa took part in the struggle to defend North Africa and to liberate France and Western Europe. Ghana itself, and other places in West Africa, became key staging point for the Allies' advances through North Africa and southern Europe. In Ghana, after the war, the returned servicemen played a special part in the work of Ghanaians towards independence.

We live now in an age of peace in much of our world. Conflict between nations is much reduced.

The hard work of defence force personnel is today more likely to be in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building. Ghana is an early and enduring example of this. Since independence its military forces have developed deep experience in peace missions - with the United Nations from the beginning, in the Congo, and more recently with the African Union and ECOWAS. Australia and New Zealand too have made contributions to UN and regional peace building, including in Africa. The Australian War Memorial in Canberra now includes on its honour roll the names of Australian peacekeepers who have died in service.

This year and next, while Australia is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, global peace and security take on an extra dimension for us. West Africa features quite strongly on the Security Council's agenda. This preoccupies me and my staff, as we look beyond Ghana’s borders to Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali.

Over time, ANZAC Day has changed. Our commemoration has expanded:

We remember those who died in military service

those who served and survived

and others affected by war and the commitment to war.

It is a day for Australians and New Zealanders to gather with our friends and to think about our experience in these things, how history has affected our families, how it has shaped our people and our nations. Our history has meant that war has touched very many of us.

As time passes, as the experiences of Gallipoli, of the First and Second World Wars, become remote, we find a greater interest in commemoration. Young and old join the parades and services in Australia and New Zealand, in large numbers.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us here in Accratake our place in the commemoration worldwide of ANZAC Day in 2013.

Let us remember.