Australian Identity
Why did so many Australians sign up for and go so willingly to a war on the other side of the world, against an enemy about whom most knew little and towards whom initially they felt no animosity? A partial explanation is given by Les Carlyon in his book Gallipoli (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2001): 'Australians saw themselves as transplanted Britons' and 'any war against Britain was a war against them'. This perception of the war by Australians made their choice to enlist easier. The diggers' patriotic allegiance to Britain shifted as a result of the war. In the main, they remained loyal to the empire but to this was now added a more confident and focused Australian self-image. While Australians at home also still looked to Britain as the mother country, Gallipoli, or more specifically the Australian public's understanding of Gallipoli, helped define for Australians a distinctive image of themselves.
War correspondents, both Australian and British, were integral to this building of Australian's newfound sense of themselves. News reports initially, and later war literature, shaped the redefinition of what it meant to be Australian. The Australian public experienced the war at first only through the eyes of war correspondents. Their depiction of the Australian soldier as lean, brave, casual and carefree, yet intensely loyal to his mates, has lived on as an Australian ideal.
As repeated despatches recounting the heroic deeds of Australian soldiers reached home, Australians began to feel, as they still do, that there was something special about being Australian and that the digger personified a unique national type, born of the Australian bush and confirmed for the rest of the British world at Gallipoli. This was the bronzed Anzac, the idealised image of the Australian at war and of the Australian spirit. Only 14 years earlier, the Australian colonies had federated as a nation. Gallipoli came to be seen as an affirmation of that nationhood. Both the legend and the Anzac image were quickly established and transcended the bitter divisions of the conscription debate faced by Australians later in the war.
