The Changing Commemorative Landscape during the Australian Interwar Period

The ‘Pioneer Woman Citizen’ Joins the ‘Citizen Soldier’

Abstract

In the aftermath of the First World War, the Australian commemorative landscape was dominated by remembrance of the sacrifices made predominantly by men during wartime, celebrating a constructed national identity based on ‘egalitarian’ masculinity through the figure of the ‘citizen soldier’. By the end of the succeeding two decades, during which the terms of Australian nationhood underwent significant changes, the citizen soldier’s domination of Australia’s commemorative culture was challenged by a new historical and cultural subject of memorialisation: the ‘pioneer woman citizen’. Embedded in the language asserting the pioneer woman citizen into the public commemorative landscape was the exclusion of Aboriginal women, who were located outside of the boundaries of citizenship.