Panania Diggers Club Memorial Garden

Flagpole plinth

ANZAC Centenary

Walk

Wall of Remembrance

Lest We Forget

[individual name plaques]

Greece marble plaque

ANZACS OF GREECE

[Greek text]

Doing battle beside the Hellespont these men lost their shining youth. They brought honour to their homeland, so that the enemy groaned as it carried off the harvest of war, and for themselves they set up a deathless memorial of their courage.

LEMNOS MACEDONIA CRETE

Greece brass plaque

ANZACS OF GREECE

[Emblem]

Consultate General of Greece in Sydney

This marble plaque is offered as a gesture of gratitude from the Greek-Australian community for the Ausrtralians and New Zealanders - ANZACS - who defended democracy in its birthplace during both World Wars. More than 64,000 ANZACS set off from the Greek Island of Lamnos for the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. More than 500 Australian and New Zealanders nurses served along the Macadonian Front (1916 - 1918). More than 45,000 ANZACS fought in Greece during World War II. Of these extraordinary men and women, 795 Australians and 1,200 New Zealanders lie in Greek soil; nearly half of the Australian war dead have never been found or their remains identified.

The original inscription is part of a longer inscription commemorating the sacrifice of Athenian warriors who died fighting at the Hellespont (Dardanelles) in the mid-5th century BCE. In 1932, Australian poet and Classical Greek scholar Christopher Brennan brought the inscription to the attention of Robert Innes Kay. He in turn, brought it to the attention of Charles Bean. All three were struck by how aptly the inscription related to the ANZAC experience despite being written over 2,000 years earlier. A plaster replica was arranged by John Treloar in 1935 and was placed in the Australia War Memorial.

LEMNOS MACEDONIA CRETE