Such an amazing museum. I did not expect to love it as much as I did. It mixes the personal stories of those who were in combat with the memorial for 100,000 who died for Australia . Each day a soldier who died is memorialised and a photo of them remains throughout the day. At 4.30pm
each day a short story of the the soldier is read, the wreaths by their relatives laid and bagpipes play and the last post is played. Excellent and moving . Take a free tour so good . I can’t rave enough about this place . The people who help run it are amazing and everything about it is special
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9th day of our 20-day trip and we had booked the 2-4pm time slot so that we could then move on to the Last Post ceremony. After a very ordinary lunch at Poppy's cafe, we headed over to the main building. Once inside, we realised that the place was rather overwhelming and weren't sure where to start. A staff member must have recognised that we looked the most confused of the many, many other confused people loitering there and asked if she could help. We advised that all four of our grandfathers had fought in France in the Ist war and survived and she very quickly led us off to locate the 2pm tour group which had just left. What a blessing. I hadn't even considered doing a tour when arranging this trip but it was a wonderful and quite emotional hour listening to an elderly and very knowledgeable returned serviceman covering a horrifying period in great detail. As with everything else at the memorial, the tour was free and I would highly recommend it.
After he moved on, we returned to revisit some of the areas and look at others and spent quite a while in the relative peace and quiet of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Towards 4pm, staff were moving about in preparation for the museum to close so we headed out to the Commemorative Courtyard. Tip: there is no seating in the courtyard and, whilst the booking confirmation for the ceremony advises that it goes from 4 to 5 pm, it didn't start until after 4.30. If you don't want to stand for an extended period, you can sit on one side of the steps if you get there early enough or, like us, snag a bench at the entry to the museum and move out to the courtyard just before the ceremony begins.
I thought the ceremony was good but I found the tour and the tomb were far more moving and emotional. One thing I didn't understand was that the person who played the Last Post was a civilian. I'd expected a serviceman to do it. Not a big deal but a person in a pin-striped suit wearing a black fedora hat looked out of place (and also played a few bad notes).