Professor Joan Beaumont Who
owns Gallipoli? graves, bones, and roads and transnational heritage It was the thousands of Australian and New Zealander visitors to Gallipoli that precipitated the controversy that will be examined in this paper: that is, the decision in 2004 by the Australian and Turkish governments to improve the road access to Anzac Cove. This incident illustrates not only the deeply politicised nature of the memory of Gallipoli within Australia; but also a problem of wider significance—namely, the difficulty of protecting the integrity and authenticity of sites that are significant to Australians’ memory of war as these are appropriated for official commemoration and battlefield tourism. In the 20th century over 100 000 Australian service men and women died on military service, and the vast majority of deaths were suffered ‘in foreign lands’. Hence, many of the sites of significance in Australian national memory of war are overseas. In some cases, these sites have ‘trans-national heritage’ significance: that is, they have meaning for the local populations as well as Australians; this is notably the case with Gallipoli. In all cases, these overseas sites are under the sovereign control of foreign governments. What ownership or control then does Australia have over the development and heritage protection of such sites? And how can the integrity and authenticity of these sites be protected from the impact of the mass tourism that is an inevitable part of their having such a central place in Australian national memory?
Professor
Joan Beaumont is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Education
and Alfred Deakin Professor,
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