23 minute read
Unforgettable Hour
BY PETER LUBY
The Dedication of the Shrine of Remembrance in November 1934 was one of the most impressive and moving spectacles ever seen in Melbourne. It took place during a State Centenary and a Royal Visit, but eclipsed them both. News reports, letters and Shrine records build a picture of a cathartic, overwhelming experience—a ceremony of intense precision and solemn grandeur—as the city held its breath for an unforgettable two minutes’ silence.
Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month, 1932: the Sanctuary of the National War Memorial of Victoria. For the first time, members of the public watch in silence as a slanting beam of light strikes the ‘Rock of Remembrance’. This was not a formal ceremony: no words were spoken, no bugles sounded. But the presence of this small group of men and women in the Shrine spoke of the magnetic hold the monument already had on the public imagination.
The building was unfinished, despite four years of construction and a decade of planning. Hopes that the formal dedication would take place in 1932 had evaporated in the grimmest year of the Great Depression, a casualty of the slow drip-feed of funds. State Premier Sir Stanley Argyle now proposed that Victoria should invite a Royal Visitor to dedicate the Shrine during the forthcoming State Centenary.
For two more years Victorians kept visiting the Shrine, climbing to the Balcony, watching politicians, veterans and sportsmen lay wreaths in the Sanctuary. But in January 1934 parts of the building were still not ready: the Crypt; bronze cases in the Ambulatory; Pool of Reflection; floodlight pylons; and sculptural groups for the tympana. One month out from the Dedication hundreds of unemployed men on sustenance payments were still landscaping the lawns and approaches.
Anticipation grew as November loomed. Although the Centenary would run until July 1935, the Dedication was being billed as its ‘climax’. Brigadier General Stewart was appointed Marshal of the ceremony and worked with the Shrine Trustees, Melbourne City Council, the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League (RSSILA), Police and the St John Ambulance Brigade to prepare for the largest public event in the state’s history.
On 18 October, a small fleet of Empire warships escorted HMS Sussex through the heads of Port Phillip Bay, 50 RAF and RAAF planes flying a protective screen overhead. A flotilla of steamers, launches and yachts collected around the heavy cruiser as it docked at Port Melbourne. At 1.35pm, His Royal Highness Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, third eldest son of King George V of England, disembarked to a 21-gun salute. Thousands of loyal Melburnians cheered his carriage up Beaconsfield Parade and down the length of St Kilda Road. As he passed the Shrine of Remembrance “he gravely saluted”. On the steps of State Parliament, the Duke read a message from the King. Centenary celebrations had begun.
That evening, the Centenary Illuminations were switched on and the city lit up in a festive blaze. For months, sightseers would flock to central Melbourne at dusk to gaze on the “fairy land” of buildings and monuments flood-lit red, green and tangerine along the axis of Swanston and Collins streets.
That first night of the Royal Visit, the city also endured the dubious spectacle of a mock air raid – an aeroplane trailing magnesium flares onto the Manchester Unity skyscraper and T&G Building, which “exploded” with fireworks, smoke and searchlight beams. Beyond the brilliantly lit pylons of Princes Bridge, the Shrine gleamed white under floodlight in the Domain, safe from air attack. Its moment in the spotlight was a month away.
The weeks leading up to the Dedication were fraught. October was unseasonably wet, drenching Centenary events and the Royal Melbourne Show, and rain was feared on Armistice Day. A plague of grasshoppers descended on crops in the Mallee—millions of insects on a “front” from Mildura to Swan Hill. Newspapers reported on disarmament in Europe and war manoeuvres in Japan.
One week out from Armistice Day, rain and gloomy skies continued to dog Melbourne. On Tuesday, a horse named Peter Pan ran on a very heavy track at Flemington to win the Melbourne Cup for the second time (the Duke of Gloucester presented the Cup). Attorney-General Robert Menzies banned a Czech anti-war activist from entering Australia to prevent him speaking at the All Australian Congress Against War. Egon Kisch—a communist—was kept “prisoner” on a ship off Station Pier until after the Dedication. He had been a prisoner of the Nazi regime and had come to Melbourne to warn about the threat of Hitler.
Saturday 10 November was cloudy with occasional showers and the Melbourne daily newspapers made a last-minute appeal for 30 cars to transport wounded veterans and “cot-cases” from Caulfield Military Hospital to the Shrine tomorrow “so that none of the incapacitated returned men shall be disappointed”.
The Duke’s schedule that day was exhausting. He watched the Duke of Gloucester Cup at Flemington, a Grand Military Gymkhana at the Showgrounds, then drove through a traffic jam of well-wishers to the RAAF Air Pageant at Laverton to present a Gold Cup to the winners of the Centenary Air Race.
On Saturday night, he entered the Melbourne Town Hall through lines of 600 cheering ex-servicemen to speak at a RSSILA dinner. Although he’d been too young to serve in the First World War, he was a soldier and to these men he represented the monarch and cause they had served in that war. All stood in silence to remember departed comrades. The Duke anticipated the next day’s sentiments: It is most fitting that we should have paid our silent tribute to our comrades, but while Armistice Day brings back these solemn thoughts, it is also an occasion for rejoicing for the return of peace. The atmosphere was highly charged. The old Diggers sang Tipperary and There’s a Long, Long Trail, and the Duke joined in, enjoying “the fire of chaff and banter” as he moved between the tables.
Late that night, members of the Victorian Homing Association collected 75 wicker panniers from their metropolitan clubrooms and drove to the Shrine. In darkness they hauled baskets full of 10,000 fluttering pigeons up two flights of stairs to the Upper Balcony, ready for tomorrow’s ceremony. When rain fell in the early hours the pigeon fanciers threw tarpaulins over the panniers to protect their birds.
But from out the ether coming, I could hear a cast crowd's humming, Hear the singing, then... the Silence. And I knew the hour had come...
CJ Dennis
The sky at dawn was sullen and grim, but when Police contingents arrived at the Shrine at 5am to take up position people were already gathering. The St John Ambulance Brigade had stations and tents set up by 8am. Detachments came from Geelong to bolster total officers and nurses up to 354. The public were advised to be in the city by 9am to allow time to get through the crowds and take up vantage points, but by 8.30am thousands had already found spots on the grassy slopes.
Predictions that half a million would descend on the Shrine had prompted anxiety over transport arrangements. Victorian Railways came to the rescue with a schedule of special trains leaving the farthest edges of the state at 4am to bring country travellers to Melbourne. Return fares were capped at the price of a single fare. The Tramways Board had trams rolling out of depots at 6.30am to reach Flinders Street Station and the Shrine by 7.15am. Every inspector was on duty, extra crews were on standby, and conductors with extra bags of change were stationed on St Kilda Road.
To cope with demand, suburban electric trains were running every 10 minutes. Between 7am and 10am, trains rattled into Flinders Street Station at a rate of one every 53 seconds. Travellers poured through the ticket gates as the half-muffled bells of St Paul’s Cathedral rang out. The solemn chimes followed the “seething mass of people” moving towards the Shrine on foot, in crowded trams, by car. By 9am, the monument appeared to be a great magnet drawing “almost a whole city toward its base”.
The east slope of the southern lawn promised the best view of the Duke, but couldn’t be entered after 9.30am. Holders of colour-coded
tickets were advised to take their places early. Red, Blue and White areas (for the choir, musicians and Shrine guests) were to the west and centre. The Green area for disabled soldiers and “cot-cases” was nearest the steps with a view of the dais, Yellow (widows and bereaved mothers) and Brown (for fathers of the fallen) to the east. On the lawn further east, a field gun stood ready to fire.
A large area in front of the south steps was reserved for the returned men of the AIF. This great “mufti” army had orders to assemble in their divisions in the side streets around Melbourne Grammar by 8.30am. Navy, Air Force and Light Horse veterans, and Imperial troops from Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, formed up nearby. Bands played as columns of men moved off just after 9am in a carefully orchestrated pincer movement, swinging east off St Kilda Road or west along Domain Road then wheeling north toward the Shrine in strictly prescribed order, 120 men abreast.
“The Deathless Army” – 27,500 men led by their officers in dress uniform – moved up the slope in wave after wave, thousands of medals clinking, and swallowed up two acres of green at the base of the Shrine. Twenty Artillery trumpeters and 18 Army buglers marched from the western terrace to the tap of Naval Reserve drums, drawing up in lines on the steps and turning to face the crowd.
The public kept streaming up from the city, up and around the hill, until “the lawns were black with people”. Some climbed trees or threw simple rope swings over branches to get a slightly elevated view. Small boys pushed through the throng hawking unauthorised souvenirs and trays of ice-creams, to the disapproval of many. Cine-cameras from the newsreel companies and press photographers from across Australia stood high up on scaffold platforms, clustered near the dais, or captured the majestic scene from the Balcony.
From a microphone on the steps, Professor George S. Browne was broadcasting a live, descriptive commentary for radio station 3LO. A “splitter panel” on the Balcony fed “distortion-free” sound through eight 20-watt amplifiers and underground cable to 32 Amalgamated Wireless loudspeakers banked on the floodlight pylons or grouped across the hill. Browne, an educator and decorated veteran, asked the crowd to refrain from cheering when the Duke arrived.
His words went out across the Commonwealth, into churches holding morning service, to the radios the RSSILA had set up at country town cenotaphs. In the lull before the Duke’s arrival, the commentary “filled in”, describing the scene at the Shrine for listeners and citing Will Longstaff’s painting Menin Gate at Midnight. In 1927, this famous image of a ghostly army gathering on a field around a great monument had struck a nerve with grieving post-war Australians.
The craze for Spiritualism that blossomed in the wake of the Great War was very much alive in Melbourne in 1934—dozens of churches still advertised seances or promised “overhead messages” to those yearning for contact with the souls of the Fallen. On the morning of the Dedication, many gazing up at the sculptural group of the south tympanum (‘The Homecoming’) must have felt that perhaps the spirits of the war dead were gathering there, to be laid to rest—symbolically at least—on home soil and “sacred ground”.
10.25am
Thirty military and municipal brass bands began to play Handel’s stately Largo, setting the tone for the ceremony ahead. The smoke haze hanging over the hill from thousands of pipes and cigarettes slowly thinned and disappeared out of respect. The last notes of the Largo faded, the bands played the first line of Lead Kindly Light, and the massed choir of 5,000 led the crowd singing Cardinal Newman’s beautiful prayer for guidance and hope in darkness.
The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on…
“Always a favourite hymn with the soldiers, it was sung wonderfully well, everyone endeavouring to put feeling into it,” one “Digger” wrote. Voices of widows and grieving parents blended softly with the swell from the great choir.
And with the morn, those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
The Age reported “there could have been nothing more appropriate”. Nearer My God to Thee followed and “again the multitude burst into song”. Voices “became like the roar of sea surf… volumes of sound rolled on until they broke against one another…”
10.45am
A troop of the 13th Light Horse cantered off St Kilda Road onto Domain Road ahead of the Royal Humber. The Duke stepped from the gleaming car wearing the khaki service uniform of his regiment, the 10th Royal Hussars. State Governor Lord Huntingfield greeted him and they joined the official cortège: Brigadier General Stewart, Chairman of the Shrine Trustees General Sir Harry Chauvel, Premier Argyle, Melbourne’s Lord Mayor George Wales, Victorian President of the RSSILA, Brigadier-Generals, naval and air force Commanders, Sir Alexander Godley who led the New Zealanders at Gallipoli, and Miss Grace Wilson, Senior Matron of the Australian Army Nursing Service and Shrine Trustee.
There were 500 former Army nursing sisters dotted across the crowd in their red-and-white.
“Gangway please! There are some returned nurses with blind soldiers late – wanting to reach their front positions allotted to them, and what a track was made for them. The Prince did not have a more uninterrupted pathway to the Shrine than those nurses and blind men had, passing through hundreds of soldiers.”
– A “Digger” from Ouyen
A member of the Father’s Association of Victoria from Shepparton was moved by the “cot-cases”:
… brought thither in vans kindly furnished for the purpose by city business firms, unable to move, these sorely stricken soldiers were tenderly lifted into positions where they could see and hear something of what was going on. Looking at them, something approaching realisation of what an accursed thing war is came home to the mind, and made one ready to join with heart and soul in the prayer Give Peace in Our Time O Lord.
The Duke progressed up towards the Shrine through ranks of silent veterans, his path flanked by the fixed bayonets of the Navy and Militia. Armed colour parties of 22 Victorian Infantry Battalions and Light Horse regiments paced behind. Women in the crowd took compact mirrors from their purses, turned, and held the mirrors up to catch a reverse glimpse of the Duke over the heads of the crowd. Several fixed these makeshift periscopes to the ribs of umbrellas and held those aloft to get an advantage.
Secretary of the Shrine Trustees Jack Barnes and members of the Centenary Committee met the cortège at the south steps. The bands struck up the national anthem—God Save the King—and the Duke stood to attention, saluting. Brigadier General Stewart had timed to the minute how long it would now take for the cortège to proceed via the western terrace, ascend the steps on the north side, and walk through the Sanctuary doors at exactly two minutes before 11am.
Banks of blue-black cloud still blocked the sun. The colour parties spread out across the steps and faced the Shrine. The far-off muffled bells of St Paul’s had stopped. Trumpets sounded two long warning notes of ‘G’. Half a minute to 11.
In the amber glow of the ‘Inner Shrine’, the Duke looked down at the Rock of Remembrance. The official cortège stood behind, heads bowed. Beside the Duke was Captain William Dunstan VC, of Ballarat, representing the AIF. Dunstan was awarded the Victoria Cross for “exceptional courage” at Lone Pine. Today he held a wreath of poppies and bay laurel, the tribute of King George V, brought from England. Dunstan handed the wreath to the King’s son.
The Silence
The dark clouds finally shredded and sunshine broke from blue sky. Road traffic around the Shrine slowed, pulled over, stopped mid-street. Tram drivers pushed their control handles to ‘off’ and trams ground to a halt. Electrical current to the entire city tram network was now cut off.
East of the Shrine, the field gun boomed to signal the 11th hour. The echo of the shot drifted across bowed heads and “the great concourse fell into an awed silence, terrifying, profound, sacred”. The wind was at rest. Faintly, the clang of the South Melbourne Town Hall clock marked out 11. After that, only the sound of weeping, “the sibilance of the whispered prayer of a woman standing near,” and the distant drone of aeroplanes high above. For two minutes a city of almost one million was still.
Within the Shrine, a beam of sunlight was falling “like a glittering sword through the semi-obscurity of the upper spaces of the dome”. It “flooded the tablet and softly lit up the Sanctuary”. One account records the Duke was so entranced by the light moving imperceptibly over the inscription ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’ that Jack Barnes had to prompt him: “Lay the wreath, Sir”. Jogged from reverie, the Duke lowered the wreath to rest on the memorial stone.
At the end of the two minutes there was a mighty, soft sigh from the crowd. Sunlight flashed on bugles rising up to sound “that silver evocation,” the Last Post. Shrill, clear, melancholy, “last bugle call of the soldier’s day, the requiem of the dead”.
High up on the “parapet” of the Shrine was fifteen-year-old cornetist Roy McFadyen, one of four boys recruited from suburban brass bands to “echo” the Last Post from the corners of the Balcony - pushing the sound out over the city and suburbs. He later recalled how his band master “insisted that on this special day I get it right”. As the notes drifted down from the northeast corner, “young as I was I could detect the sadness of the crowd…”
A pause, then the trumpets rang out Reveille, rousing and hopeful and fading again to silence. The south doors of the Sanctuary opened and the Duke emerged. Buglers and colour parties divided to let the cortège through to the dais.
11.06am
Bands played the Old Hundredth and the multitude took up the great hymn, led by the choir. Senior Chaplain A. P. Bladen read the prayer: “Eternal Father, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead… bring us, in this day of remembrance and dedication of this Shrine, into fellowship with those Thy servants who laid down their lives in the time of war…”
11.13am
Sir Harry Chauvel stepped to the lectern to introduce Premier Argyle, who made a short speech of thanks for the Royal presence and then declaimed the words of the Ode written by Rudyard Kipling expressly for this moment. He then asked the Duke of Gloucester to dedicate the Shrine. The Duke moved to the microphone. His voice shook slightly, “for he shared the emotion that stirred the huge assemblage”.
This noble Shrine, which I am invited to dedicate, has been erected as a token of our gratitude to those who fought for us… they fought to secure to the world the blessings of peace. It is for us to seek to repay their devotion by striving to preserve that peace, and by caring for those who have been left bereaved or afflicted by the war. To the Glory of God and in grateful memory of the men and women of this State who served in the Great War, and especially of those who fell, I dedicate this Shrine.
A roll of drums and a fanfare from the trumpets was cue for the Duke to press a button on the lectern, sending an electric charge to the Union Jack draping the stone pier beneath the portico. The flag that had once hung on the Cenotaph in London jerked aside to reveal the Dedication stone.
Bands struck up Kipling’s Imperialist hymn Recessional and “the vast crowd sang with vigour”, the timeless phrase of remembrance, “Lest We Forget”. Sombre clouds framed the Shrine again. The bands played Chopin’s chilling Marche Funèbre, as if the mood of grief at large on the hill needed any further expression.
Dr Head, Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, pronounced a Benediction and God Save the King was sung again. The Duke’s entourage promenaded around the eastern terrace to the north side where architect Philip Hudson presented the Prince with “a gold key” to unlock the great bronze door. Thus the Duke became the first person to enter the Shrine after the Dedication, and Hudson conducted him on an inspection of the interior.
Around this time, plainclothes policemen pushed through the crowd at the Pool of Reflection and arrested a man wearing a red antiwar ribbon. Harold Fletcher threw a handful of pamphlets to the ground, kicked them about, yelling “I protest! Down with the warmongers! Release Kisch!” Struggling to break free, he was bundled down to St Kilda Road and into a car, shouting “scurrilous statements”.
Fletcher was later jailed for 23 days for ‘delivering handbills in public places’. He told the court he was at the service out of respect for his comrades who gave their lives in the war. The magistrate said it was lucky he didn’t cause a riot. A local printer was prosecuted under the Shrine of Remembrance Site Act for using “a substantial likeness of the Shrine” (without approval) in the offending pamphlets, which asserted that returned soldiers “built their own monument for 12 shillings a week”.
11.43am
The reappearance of the Duke from the south doors triggered the release of the 10,000 pigeons quivering in panniers on the Upper Balcony. They rose “like a huge puff of smoke”, hovered as they got their bearings, then circled over the Shrine and wheeled away across Victoria to their lofts.
The sight of the pigeons, the meaning attributed to them, captivated the press: to some they were the outbreak of peace 16 years before; to others “the homeward movement that commenced on the day the Armistice was signed”. British Poet Laureate John Masefield watched them circle round the Shrine against a black cloud lit by the sun. He thought them “the climax of beauty and inspiration of a deeply noble ceremony”.
The press built up the number of birds from 10,000 to 15,000 to 20,000 and the further the newspaper from Victoria, the more fanciful the reports. Perth’s Daily News had promised the spectacle of 20,000 Diggers “acting as one man” throwing 20,000 champion homing pigeons high in the air as the choir sang “a hymn of triumph”. Brisbane’s Sunday Mail claimed the Duke himself would “make an inspection of the Shrine and release 20,000 pigeons from the Upper Gallery”.
As the Duke of Gloucester moved off the eastern terrace to rejoin his car, the crowd broke out with a roar of cheering, especially from the wounded returned men. Cheers followed his car as it headed for Government House, with the Light Horse escort at the trot. The Dedication was over. It had lasted just a few minutes over one hour. Magically, the fog of cigarette and pipe-smoke returned to the Shrine and shrouded the heads of the crowd like a sigh of relief.
Wreaths were now laid in the Sanctuary by Empire dominions and foreign dignitaries. Canada laid a wreath of maple leaves, Scotland a cross of wildflowers and heather. At the special direction of the Japanese Government, Consul-General Mr Murai had come by train from Sydney. Sailors and marines from HMS Sussex carried in a giant wreath in the shape of an anchor. Masefield left a wreath on behalf of the Poets of England; visiting British golfers brought a cross of white flowers and lavender.
“With amazing order”, the crowd outside dispersed or began the march back to the city: “an army of men and women moving on a front hundreds of yards wide, to the conquest of Melbourne”. Thousands surged up into the Shrine, waited silently to inspect the King’s wreath resting on the Rock, or filed down stairwells into the Crypt. When evening floodlights came on, hundreds still lingered around the Pool of Reflection, not wanting to let the day go.
Brigadier Stewart estimated the crowd at the ceremony was 317,500, “probably the largest gathering that has ever assembled in Australia”. The St John Ambulance Brigade treated 478 cases of fainting and collapse. Civil ambulances attended 70 cases of “emotional prostration” and took eight people to hospital. For many, the Dedication had been the long-delayed or denied ritual of mourning—the funeral service for a loved one, a laying to rest.
Private grief wasn’t resolved or ended by the formal Dedication, but with the building complete Victorians felt they now had a place where their emotions could find public expression and acceptance. A day after the Dedication, the Melbourne Herald published a poem by its resident bard C.J. Dennis. Come Ye Home captured in a dream-like vision the sentiments of that vast crowd before the Shrine on Armistice Day, 1934.
I could see the kneeling thousands by the Shrine’s approaches there. Then, above those heads low-bending,
Like an orison ascending, Saw a multitude’s great yearning rise into the quivering air… There, I saw from out high Heaven spread above the great Shrine’s dome,
From the wide skies overarching, I beheld battalions marching - Mates of mine! My comrades, singing: Coming home! Coming home!
Peter Luby is an Education Officer at the Shrine of Remembrance.
