‘“[It] ought to be as famous as the Statue of Liberty”: The Forgotten History of Tasmania’s Cenotaph – Australia’s First State War Memorial’

In December 1925, the people of Hobart gathered on the banks of the Derwent to witness the unveiling of the state's war memorial. It was, the Mercury mused, an 'impressive' structure. The great grey obelisk towered some twenty-three metres above the crowd. Raised by public subscription and costing over 6,000, it was the first of Australia's state war memorials, and an occasion where Tasmania (least populous of all the states) could truly claim to lead the Commonwealth. Dubbed 'the cenotaph' by popular acclaim, Hobart's war memorial joined a forest of monuments raised the length and breadth of the country, a landmark in what Ken Inglis has called 'the war memorial movement'. And yet historians know surprisingly little about it. To date there is no extended account of Australia's first state war memorial, no interrogation as to how or why it was built and no attempt to unravel the complex and contested meanings implicit in any memorial.