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We pause here in silence. We reflect on this day when the guns finally fell silent on the Western Front in 1918.

Immersed in the spirit of those who have given their all, their lives for us in war, in peacekeeping and in humanitarian assistance. We pay tribute and ponder what we have been given.

Conceived in the blood they shed for one another, for us and the ideals of mankind, the Australian War Memorial speaks to values. Our values.

Australia’s official First World War correspondent was Charles Bean. From the Gallipoli landing, Pozieres to Passchendaele, Mont St Quentin and the Hindenberg Line, he was witness to it all.

But on the day of the Armistice, Bean chose not to celebrate. Instead, he took a photographer and drove to Fromelles to the site of Australia’s worst day ever - 5,533 casualties: 1,917 dead. He wanted to be with the men who had dreamt of the day they would never see, but for which they had given their lives.

In emotional silence he walked the battlefield:

“We found the old no man’s land was simply full of our dead. The skulls and bones and the torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.”

On this day, Bean wrote:

“It is over. The enormous effort of the men – yes, and women and children is finished we are free to be happy again.”

But this happiness came at the cost of 60,000 Australian lives with 152,171 casualties and thousands more who would die in the decade that would follow.

Reflecting on the death of his much-loved cousin, Lieutenant Leo Butler at Mouquet Farm in August 1916, Bean’s anguished diary note asked:

“Was there anything in this war or any other, to justify such sacrifices?”

Years later, writing the official history he pondered that question over and over, prompting him to ask, what was so special about the Australians?

His answer was: “The answer lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the kind of man that would give way when his mates were trusting to his firmness….to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he lacked the grit to carry it through, this was the prospect with which these men could not live. Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their ideal of Australian manhood.”

Bean understood he had observed and recorded the revelation of an emerging Australian character.

Only a generation later, a small group of Australians defending our vital interests on the Kokoda trail, conquered first a brutal terrain to then suffer, fight and die in the midst of great loneliness. Their legacy stands etched in four granite pillars at Isurava.

Four values informing our national character:

Courage - that spirit that challenges doubt, imposes will and inspires us to break through fear.

Endurance - never give up.

All these values are the spirit of the Australian War Memorial.

Thank you. .