Side-by-side memorials and Australian Vietnam War remembrance

This thesis argues that side-by-side memorials, built by Vietnamese and Australian Vietnam veterans, are a unique theme in Australia's memorial landscape wherein Australian soldier statues generally stand alone. It provides understanding of how these memorials emerged, and discusses the significance of this new theme for Australian Vietnam War remembrance.

Lived experience of gay men caring for others with HIV/AIDS : living, loving and dying in the era of HIV/AIDS

This thesis explored gay male carers’ experience of caring for their partner, brother or friend who had HIV/AIDS. Through using phenomenological methodology (van Manen, 1990), the day-to-day caring experiences were uncovered. The data gathered were then analysed through a nursing ‘lens’, with the concept of stigma as an anchoring point. The dual stigmas of homophobia and AIDS phobia impacted on the daily lives of these men as they cared for their loved one. The research identified six themes. These were: 1) the relationship; 2) coping with HIV and AIDS; 3) the corporal impact of HIV/AIDS; 4) experiences of carers including the absence of others; 5) living daily with the virus: Demands of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA); and 6) saying goodbye, but wanting to keep the memory alive. The caring these men undertook, for which they were frequently unprepared, was intensive and complex, but because of their commitment and love they battled on. Because of a sense of shame associated with AIDS phobia on the part of the PLWHA, the carer often had to undertake this care in isolation, without support from family, friends or home health care agencies. The carers struggled with not only the demands of day-to-day care, but also with non-acceptance from family, both of the nature of the relationship with their partner and of their homosexuality. Family members were forced, often with great difficulty, to acknowledge the close commitment the men had to each other. Recognition that one had a terminal disease, HIV/AIDS was also required. The fear of potential transmission was high among carers, friends and family members. Notably, there was an absence of blame on the part of the carer towards his partner for contracting HIV/AIDS. The physical decline and marking of the body further stigmatised the PLWHA, which added to carers’ burdens. They endeavoured to minimise the physical decline in their partner, so he could continue to pass as healthy, and attempted to make the day-to-day living as normal as possible. The methods of combating weight loss and opportunistic infections meant frequent medical appointments, complex intensive medical procedures and help with personal care, which was undertaken at home largely without support from health care staff. Carers frequently struggled also with their partner’s denial of being ill. One strategy all carers used was to escape with their partners from their everyday life in Melbourne and attempt metaphorically to leave the HIV/AIDS behind; this was a time when they could rekindle their life together as it was before HIV/AIDS came into their lives. Some carers chose to holiday without their partner, to give themselves a break from the day-to-day caring, while others planned and took holidays with their partner. The decline of the health in the PLWHA meant that family members had to recognise and accept both the nature of the relationship and the presence of the disease. This recognition and acceptance often came only when the partner was very ill, even at the point of dying. Carers and their partners discussed the potential use of euthanasia, as a means of ending the final phase of life with some dignity. One carer and his partner used euthanasia, despite its illegal status. The main concern for all carers was providing comfort and a reduction in the pain associated with HIV/AIDS for the partner. The widespread grief associated with HIV/AIDS was evident amongst these carers. All had known other gay men who had died, some carers own partner had died, or was about to die. There was an overwhelming sense of grief, which at times was repressed as a means of coping day-to-day. All carers felt it was important and necessary to remember those lost to HIV/AIDS through the various public memorials, as they did not want their partner to be just another faceless person lost to this disease. This phenomenological study of carers’ experience highlights the need for health care workers to be aware of the differing strategies that gay men use to cope with HIV/AIDS. While it may seem that the carers are coping with care of their partner, the outer façade is not always an accurate portrayal of the true situation. Health care workers should enquire as to the assistance these carers need from health care services in order to continue to care for their loved one. Such assistance can be the simple recognition of the partner and acceptance of them as part of the PLWHA’s network; this inclusion and acceptance is half the battle.

Requiem for Empire : Fabian Ware and the Imperial War Graves Commission

More than one million soldiers of the British Empire died in the First World War. The Imperial War Graves Commission, created in 1917, had as its mandate the obligation to care for their graves and memorials, in 1850 cemeteries in more than 100 countries around the globe. Its founder, Fabian Ware, hoped and expected this Commission to have even more enduring effects, yet the political origins of the organisation remain little understood. This chapter looks beyond the monuments erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission to the ideals and intent of its creators. It argues that the driving force behind this major commemorative work was not a desire to represent any fundamental break with the past, but an attempt to produce an institution that symbolised imperial cooperation and memorialised the war and its dead in a way that would continue to place the British Empire at the centre of world affairs.

Commonwealth war graves commission

This article discusses the treatment of soldiers' bodies at Gallipoli, from death on the battlefield to the creation of permanent cemeteries and memorials by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Bushfire catastrophe in Victoria, Australia : public record, accountability, commemoration, memorialization and heritage protection

In Australia, 7 February 2009 has become known as ‘Black Saturday’ because of the bushfire catastrophe that took 173 lives and devastated communities in the central parts of the State of Victoria. The paper considers how the 2009 fires have been recorded, how the issue of accountability has been dealt with, particularly in relation to the State and its agencies but also individual residents in the fire-devastated areas, and how bushfire deaths and other losses have been commemorated through remembrance events and museum collection projects and memorialized through the creation of new monuments and the protection of remaining physical structures as official heritage. Despite the major impact of bushfires on the State, to date few bushfire-related places have been protected. The former Cockatoo Kindergarten, which acted as a community refuge during an earlier catastrophic Victorian bushfire on Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983, is an exception. Inscribed in 2012, the former kindergarten is the only bushfire-related place inscribed on the Victorian Heritage Register, in this case for its historical and social value as a place resonating with other communities affected by other bushfires and helping the broader Victorian public to come to terms with bushfire catastrophe. But, while bushfire commemoration activities and physical memorials, like those relating to war, help many societies remember individual and community pain and suffering, they can divert attention from the more fundamental questions of why they were there in the first place and what must be done to ensure the same catastrophe does not recur in the future. In this regard, the paper questions the oft-cited claim that bushfires are embedded in the Australian psyche, seeing links between the rhetoric around bushfire survival and Australian myth-making and nation-building.

Contextualizing palimpsest of collective memory in an urban hertigae site : case Study of Chahar Bagh, Shiraz - Iran

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a ‘palimpsest’. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.