A commentary about the Anzac tradition as the birth of the nation. Gallipoli was Australia's first major action in warfare and, although a military failure, it has been interpreted as a triumph for the spirit of man. The slaughter at Gallipoli scarred a generation and an entire nation.

Sidney Nolan's series of paintings on Gallipoli in the 1960s are a post war commentary just like Peter Weir's 1981 film:

Sidney Nolan, Gallipoli,

Nolan saw Gallipoli as Hell and the soldiers in terms of the dark torment of the lost souls of war:

Sidney Nolan, A Fashionable Man, (Gallipoli 1969)

Nolan helped establish Gallipoli in Australian mythology in the 1960s and he saw the Gallipoli campaign as a "legend of failure".

By ‘myths’ I mean sustaining images or narratives which not only enabled Australia’s participation in the conflict as a kind of coping strategy for individuals and the nation alike, but which also shaped Australia’s post-war self-image and place in the world.

Sidney Nolan, Gallipoli Soldier

This is a long way from the myth of the digger as the independent, ‘larrikin’ backwoodsman on the Western Front, taking delight in his status as a volunteer citizen-soldier and finding grim humour in the circumstances of trench warfare.

What we have inherited is Gallipoli as a heroic-romantic myth based firmly on the ANZAC legend as well as romance. Its name represents a kind of tragic failure of epic proportions. So we marvel at the personal vicissitudes of those involved. The remembrance of Gallipoli totally eclipses the reality of the campaign itself and it even eclipses much of the First World War.

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