Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2015

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HONOURING HISTORY

AUTHOR Ms Alison Dare Director of Humanities

2015 IS NOT ONLY A MOMENTOUS YEAR FOR GIRLS GRAMMAR AS WE CELEBRATE 140 YEARS , but is also a very important year for Australia, marking a century since Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the shores of Gallipoli in the early hours of 25 April 1915. There have arguably been more traumatic events in Australia’s war history over the past century but it is this event that has seared itself into our national consciousness. With each new generation it seems to gain more, not less, significance. To commemorate this anniversary, Brisbane Girls Grammar School conducted its inaugural ANZACs and Antiquities Study Tour to Turkey and Greece. Our group comprised twenty-three students from Years 10–12 and their accompanying teachers — Dr Rashna Taraporewalla, Ms Julie Hennessey, Dr Sally Stephens and Ms Alison Dare. To many Australians, the battlefields of Gallipoli constitute the real origin of our nationhood. Occurring just fourteen years after Federation, Gallipoli provided us with an opportunity to forge our national identity and establish international status through the trials of war, sacrifice and death. Many have seen it as a marker for the nation’s coming of age; our ‘baptism of fire’. These deeply embedded notions of the almost sacred importance of Gallipoli in our national psyche help to

Students from Years 10-12 visited ANZAC Cove as part of their study tour.

explain why so many Australians flock to Gallipoli each year. Indeed it is not uncommon in the media to hear the word ‘pilgrimage’ used when describing such visits. World War One, and more specifically Australia’s experience of it, is an integral component of the Year 9 History programme. Students learn about the lead up to war from a global perspective; the dangerous alliances that formed in the early twentieth century as well as the various theatres around the world where fighting occurred. From a more local perspective, they explore Australia’s response to war and the overwhelming jubilation that came with the announcement of the outbreak of war. Why so many young men flocked to ‘do their bit’ for the Empire, an idea that would seem strange today, is a question we seek to answer. Our approach to

GRAMMAR GAZETTE