The mistake that was Anzac should help shape the future

Australians today recognize and acknowledge a significant day in our country’s history.

Mesmerized and excited by the values of the day, the men of four infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade, First Australian Division, stormed into a foreign country in the name of ideas still debated today.

Mass grave sites remind us of
the calamity of Anzac.

With the Great Britain umbilical cord still attached, young men from Australia and New Zealand, to become known as ANZACS, rushed onto the beach of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula.
The landing, it is argued by some, should have been just south on far friendlier topography, but the dawn attackers found themselves on rugged terrain and facing determined resistance and, subsequently, thousands died or were injured.
The idea that became Anzac has, in 86 years, become mythologized and so elevated in populous thinking to become the essence of what it means to be Australian.
That makes me somewhat nervous as we seem unable to psychologically escape from the dynamic that has us acknowledge, and some would say “celebrate”, the denial of authority as in Ned Kelly’s murderous antics, and mistakes worsened by the confusion of values, as with the ongoing annual highlighting of the Anzac calamity.
Interestingly, Australians face another Anzac-like dilemma peppered with the Kelly-like questioning of authority.
Although our umbilical cord still draws from its original source, it appears now to also elicit sustenance from the modernity of the Western World and so as our values were somewhat askew in 1915, they are still questionable today.
Much has happened in nearly 100 years, but it seems will still have difficulty in determining what we want as opposed to what we really need.
It was oil that made Anzac possible, was the same finite resource that powered the many
bloody conflicts of the 20^st century and just a decade into the new millennium, little has changed.
The scramble for the last of the world’s easily accessible energy is already unsightly with nations driven by values embedded after two centuries of energy-rich luxury appearing prepared to kill under the cover of rhetoric about the protection of democracy.
Time is short and rather than waste it, along with effort, energy and money to look back at that 86-year-old mistake, we need to get beyond that emotional hurdle and look forward, consolidating what exists and, as custodians, leave the ecology of the planet intact for our grandchildren.
We stand at a fork in the road: the obvious and apparently easier way is really the highway to hell, but the more obscure and bumpy track is the appropriate route and although the destination is not apparent, the awaiting bounty is humane and sustainable.
Travelling the track means using human muscle, human resourcefulness as machines fail and our intelligence to avoid another Anzac “moment”.
(April 19, 2011)