Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00437:body:0:p149
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00437
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Character Range: 476514–479223

and difficult to visit – a place that would also contribute to an understanding of war itself. His vision evolved over the following years for a national memorial to function as both a shrine for those who died in the war and to house relics and trophies from the battlefields. Bean was later commissioned to write the official history of the First World War and was active in establishing a war records body in Australia.

Australia gained control of Australia's war records from 1916 and John Treloar was appointed to head a new Australian War Records Section in May 1917. In early 1917 the Commonwealth Government gave support for Bean's concept of a national war memorial in Canberra. The Australian War Museum Committee (AWMC) was established in 1919 and Henry Gullett was appointed as the Director.

The Federal Capital Territory (later the Australian Capital Territory) was created as the nation's capital in Canberra in 1911. Walter Burley Griffin won the international competition for the design in 1912 and his design was revised and gazetted in 1918. He proposed a central area featuring a series of artificially modelled lake basins and a land axis extending from Mount Ainslie, through the centre of a group of government buildings on the south side of the proposed central lake basin. A national war memorial/museum was not part of Griffin's plan. Following Griffin's departure in 1920, the development of Canberra was taken over by the Federal Capital Advisory Committee, chaired by architect and planner, John Sulman.

A Canberra site for the national war memorial was first considered in about 1919 and the Commonwealth Government later announced the site at the northern end of the land axis below Mount Ainslie. In 1923, Bean and the AWMC indicated their preference to the Federal Capital Advisory Committee for the national war memorial and its collection* – it should 'not be colossal in scale, but rather a gem of its kind'. The building should be 'in the nature of a temple surrounded by a garden of its own' and the collection should not be massive as might be expected in Britain, France or America (McKernan 1991: 94-95). The Australian War Memorial (AWM) was constituted under the Australian War Memorial Act 1925 and it was given a prominent and symbolic site on Griffin's land axis, opposite Parliament House and separate from the governmental and civic groups. This was similar to Lutyen's New Delhi, where the
All-India War Memorial Arch (1921-31) and the Viceroy's Palace were to face each other at opposite ends of a ceremonial avenue. Griffin supported the prominent siting of the AWM. The project was to cost no more than £250,000.

The competition for the AWM was conducted