St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

On Anzac Day 1929 the Reverend Maxwell formally presented the flag to St John’s Cathedral at a commemoration service attended by senior government and military representatives, and he was interviewed by The Brisbane Courier (now The Courier-Mail ) before the event. 2 Maxwell told the newspaper that the flag was the last one flying at the evacuation at Gallipoli, a fact of both considerable historical and sentimental interest for Australians. There is another flag at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra which hitherto was thought to be the last flag flown at Anzac. It was removed from a pole above one of the signals offices at Anzac Cove by official war correspondent Charles Bean, whose subsequent history of the Gallipoli campaign was instrumental in helping establish the Anzac legend (see further below). However, Bean removed his flag on 18 December, the second last day of evacuation, at least 24 hours before Maxwell took his flag ashore and carried it along the Cove. 3 Maxwell’s flagwas the last known flag to be displayed at Anzac just before the final group of soldiers departed in the early hours of 20 December 1915.

Maxwell’s flag was the ‘Union Jack’—the flag of Britain and the British Empire—which was officially used by Australian as well as British forces during the First World War. Uniquely Australian flags—the ‘Australian Red Ensign’ (emblazoned with the Southern Cross and the Federation star) and the ‘Australian Blue Ensign’ (a blue version of the former)—were carried or flown from time to time by individual Anzacs in the war. But it was not until 1954 that the Australian Blue Ensign became the official flag of Australia. In 1915 Australian soldiers naturally rallied to the Union Jack as the flag of Britain, the Mother Country at a time when most white Australians regarded themselves as British, and officially in battle the Union Jack took precedence over Australian flags. The flag removed by Charles Bean from Anzac Cove on the second last day of evacuation was also a Union Jack. Birdwood’s signature on Maxwell’s flag was overstitched in cotton, and the words “ANZAC 19th DEC 1915” appear underneath the signature, also in cotton. The words, quite possibly inserted by Birdwood, were backdated to reflect the day on which the flag was carried through Anzac Cove by Maxwell during the evacuation. Matching Birdwood’s signature on the top left hand corner of the flag is some wording which has since decayed and is now virtually illegible. The original wording read “Victoria, October 16, 1803– October 16, 1903,” commemorating the centenary of the first British settlement in Victoria, celebrated in 1903 by the Reverend Maxwell.

Close-up enlarged extract of Birdwood’s signature and date on the Anzac flag.

Mark Baker

2 The Brisbane Courier, 24 April 1929, “Anzac Souvenirs Presentation to St John’s Cathedral”. The article appears in the National Library of Australia ‘Trove’ online database. Maxwell’s presentation of the flag to the Cathedral was also reported in the Brisbane Telegraph in an article entitled “Flag and Cross Presented” published on 25 April 1929, the day of the flag’s presentation. The Register News-Pictorial of Adelaide also reported the event in an article entitled “Last British Flag Flown at Gallipoli Presented to Cathedral” and dated 26 April 1929. 3 Accounts differ as to when Bean was evacuated from Gallipoli but all agree it was before 19 December. Dr David Cameron in Gallipoli: The Final Battles and Evacuation of Anzac, (Big Sky Publishing, Newport, NSW, 2016, p.296) records that Bean was evacuated on 18 December. However, Bean’s biographer Peter Coulthart states that Bean was evacuated on the night of the 17th (Charles Bean, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2014, p.187).

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