St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

An enduring bond between St John’s Cathedral and Australia’s Defence Force personnel is expressed in the array of regimental colours that lie in the Cathedral, placed there by existing and former Australian Army units based in Queensland. There is a time-honoured tradition that Australian Army units present their regimental banners—known as “colours” (in the case of infantry units) and “guidons” (in the case of mounted infantry units)—to hang in an appropriate institution such as a cathedral whenever these ceremonial standards reach a certain point in their life and are superseded by new ones, or the regimental unit is disbanded and has no further need of them. The old colours and guidons are not disposed of or destroyed, but are ‘laid-up’ in a building such as a cathedral, where they are left to gradually decay and turn to ‘dust’, as the fallen bodies of the soldiers who served in these units also turn to dust. The cathedral effectively becomes the ‘tomb’ of the banner.

Opposite page: The colours of the 9th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment, laid-up in the Southern Ambulatory of St John’s Cathedral.

Aimee Catt

Brigadier R F Monaghan presents the colours of the 5th and 11th Light Horse Regiments to Dean Baddeley of the Cathedral in 1959.

Anglican Archives, Brisbane

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