Beneath the cloisters of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, not far from where the names of the nation’s dead are etched forever in bronze, two rows of stone gargoyles gaze out on the reflection pool. They were placed there in the 1940s, carved in situ just as the memorial was nearing completion. According to memorial guidebooks, the gargoyles represent ‘the original inhabitants of the continent’ prior to European arrival, and link white Australians to a ‘land of great antiquity’. To the east are set the heads of an emu, koala, platypus, possum, goanna, swan and cassowary. The menagerie continues on the western side of the building, where a kangaroo, wombat, bearded dragon, Tasmanian devil, cockatoo and dingo look down blankly at dignitaries and visitors.

Gazing out on the reflection pool: The sandstone sculpture of the ‘Male Aborigine’. Set beneath cloisters recording the names of the nation’s dead, the sculpture symbolises the marginalisation (and denigration) of Aboriginal people in the Anzac narrative sanctioned by the War Memorial. The Memorial has consistently refused to acknowledge in its galleries the war fought against Aboriginal people. Courtesy Romain Fathi.

The gargoyles might well be an attempt to Australianise a building decidedly Byzantian in inspiration. No doubt they are also a reference to medieval carvings guarding the most sacred cathedrals in Christendom. But in one respect at least, this odd assortment of animals is deeply offensive. Alongside the creatures of the bush are the crude and caricatured images of an Aboriginal woman and man.

Aboriginal people were present at the founding of the Anzac legend, and today they have claimed their rightful place there. But acknowledgement of their contribution to the First World War and subsequent conflicts has been a slow and awkward process. At first there was the problem of denial and invisibility. Aboriginal people were not permitted to enlist – though clearly many did so – and service records seldom acknowledge Indigenous descent. This was quite literally a case of being written out of history. C.E.W. Bean, the Australian War Memorial’s first director and principal author of the official history of the First AIF, made one passing reference to a single Aboriginal soldier in several thousand pages of narrative. It was as if the Aboriginal person was there purely as some kind of adornment, rather like those gargoyles chiselled into the fabric of the memorial itself.

William Irwin was the man Bean deigned to mention. In many ways, Private Irwin was an exemplary soldier and the embodiment of the very legend Bean helped to create. Born at Coonabarabran, Irwin acquired all the skills and resources of the archetypal bushman Anzac, travelling extensively across the north-west of New South Wales, shearing, droving and taking on what jobs he could. But unlike white workers, William Irwin lived in a world of seemingly arbitrary restrictions, and the authorities could have him sent back to the mission station at Quirindi at any time they chose. Perhaps it was that quest for manly independence so admired by Bean that led Irwin to volunteer for overseas service. He joined the AIF in January 1916, at a time when the desperate need for men relaxed the restrictions on Indigenous recruitment.

Private Irwin fought with the 33rd Battalion. He was wounded in action during the Battle of Messines, and again at Villers-Bretonneux a year later. Right towards the end of the war, Irwin took part in a costly assault on Mont St Quentin. In desperate fighting on this strong point of the Hindenburg Line, Irwin earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and became the first Aboriginal soldier to be so decorated for bravery. His citation records ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’:

Single-handed, and in the face of heavy fire, he rushed three separate machine-gun nests, capturing the guns and crews. While rushing a fourth, he was severely wounded. His irresistible dash inspired the whole of his company.1

'Magnificent gallentry’, to be sure – but it claimed William Irwin’s life. He died of shrapnel wounds the following day and was buried, thousands of miles from his ancestral lands, in a cemetery on the Somme.

The family of William Irwin – six siblings in all – did not have much to remember him by. Indeed they only learned of his death when a letter marked ‘Not delivered: deceased’ was returned to Quirindi station.2 When the shipping finally became available, a parcel of belongings was sent back from Europe. It contained virtually nothing of material value: a box of needles, two rings, a damaged metal wristwatch. But a few photographs and letters to his family reassured them he hadn’t forgotten them; two religious books buried deep in his kit suggest William never lost his Christian faith.

Not much to remember him by: A photograph of William Irwin rests beside his grave at Daours Communal Cemetery on the Somme. This is one of the few images that survive of this Indigenous soldier decorated for distinguished conduct in the field. It was placed there by pilgrims honouring Aboriginal service in 2014. The Connecting Spirits program undertakes regular pilgrimages to the graves of black diggers. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

When William Irwin’s medals were issued to his next-of-kin in the early 1920s, that longing for something more was rekindled. ‘I am very much concerned as to my brother’s fate,’ William’s oldest brother, Harry, wrote to the authorities. ‘Can you please advise at once if there is any of his property in the care of your department? How am I to proceed to recover it.’3 It wasn’t just that there was so little that added to the grief of Aboriginal families. Few white families could afford to travel to war graves overseas; but without a passport or citizenship, and numbering amongst the poorest Australians, no Aboriginal person could.

Twenty years after William Irwin’s death, the manager of the mission approached Harry and asked to borrow his brother’s service medals and DCM. The posthumous award for gallantry would feature in an Anzac Day ceremony planned for Caroona Aboriginal School. After the service, none of William’s medals were returned to the family. They had, the manager insisted, been ‘mislaid’. In 1996, the descendants of William Irwin appealed yet again for the return of William’s medals to their ‘rightful owners’.4 They’re still waiting for their return today. And a hundred years after the Landing at Gallipoli, the Australian War Memorial – a memorial raised to record the nation’s loss in all military conflicts, and flanked by those quaint Aboriginal gargoyles – still refuses to recognise decades of frontier war that robbed Aboriginal people of their land.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: The authors respectfully acknowledge the Gomeroi people of New South Wales and their elders, past and present. This account is based on sources in the public domain, most importantly the service dossier of William Irwin NAA: B2455, IRWIN, WILLIAM ALLEN. The authors acknowledge Brad Manera, Executive Manager of the Anzac Memorial in Sydney, who alerted them to this story and who has facilitated the community’s attempt to recover Irwin’s decoration. The medals in question will be stamped with his name and service number: William Irwin, No. 792. For general studies of Aboriginal people in the First AIF see Philippa Scarlett, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers for the AIF: The Indigenous Response to World War One (Canberra: Indigenous Histories, 2013); Alick Jackomos and Derek Fowell, Forgotten Heroes: Aborigines at War from the Somme to Vietnam (Melbourne: Victoria Press, 1993). The authors await the important work of Mick Dodson, John Maynard and Jack Pearson into Indigenous service.

1 London Gazette, 10 January 1920.

2 Report from Moree and District Repatriation Committee, 7 February 1917 NAA: B2455, IRWIN WILLIAM ALLEN.

3 Harry Grose [half-brother to William Irwin] to Base Records, Melbourne, 16 May 1920, NAA: B2455 IRWIN, WILLIAM ALLEN.

4 Koori Mail, 8 May 1996.