The Charles Bean Research Centre is located near Poppy’s Café at the Australian War Memorial. Photo: James Coleman.
“Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.”
These are the words of Dr Charles Bean, a Bathurst-born boy turned Gallipoli ‘digger’ and Australia’s first official war correspondent during World War I. He penned six of the 12 volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, completing the last in 1942.
He was also the man who conceived the idea for an Australian War Memorial.
“Many a man lying out there at Pozières or in the low scrub at Gallipoli, with his poor tired senses barely working through the fever of his brain, has thought in his last moments: ‘Well, well, it’s over; but in Australia they will be proud of this’,” he wrote.
His granddaughter, Anne Carroll, made the trip from Sydney today (June 5) with her husband, Ian, to cut the ceremonial ribbon on the new building that bears Bean’s name.
The CEW Bean Building and Research Centre, located to the right of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (near Poppy’s Café), will enable members of the public to access hundreds of thousands of war records.
Many of these records have been locked safely away in a vault at the Memorial’s warehouse in Mitchell during the massive $550 million redevelopment project.
“It’s rewarding and humbling, because he wouldn’t have expected it to have his name,” Ms Carroll said.
“He was a person who was more concerned for others and telling their story, so to have his name on this building is a thrill, and an endorsement of his work.
“When I saw it at the end of last year, it was under covers and plastic and we were in hard hats and boots, but today, when I saw it for the first time, and the outside curves of the building, I thought it’s a building one won’t tire of looking at.”
Anne Carroll talking with Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Matt Keogh inside the Charles Bean Research Centre. Photo: James Coleman.
Despite Bean’s renown, Ms Carroll hadn’t really considered the impact of her grandfather’s work until recently – “we just got on with our life and did our things”.
“I’ve become more conscious of his role as my late brother and I have copyrighted his works … He doesn’t use the first person in referring to himself … And in his diaries, he very rarely talks about the ordeals that he’s going through. On occasion, he has said my feet were so sore from walking around on the Western Front, but it’s not his trials and ordeals, it’s the people he’s writing about.”
She said as long as the new centre “fulfils its function of encouraging people to learn”, it shares his vision.
“The building is so welcoming, I think people will come and participate in what he encouraged.”
Technically, the new centre is an extension of the existing Bean building, but the Memorial says the extra space will also enable staff to “store, digitise and preserve our extensive archives”.
Australian War Memorial director Matt Anderson. Photo: James Coleman.
Director Matt Anderson said it remains the “only building at the Australian War Memorial named after an individual”, and that’s deliberate.
“Charles Bean was a visionary, a man who landed with the Australian troops in Gallipoli, where he was wounded, and he carried that wound with him and that bullet with him for the remainder of his life,” he said.
“He refused to be evacuated. He also refused a knighthood after the war. He stayed with the troops on the Western Front, and it was on the Western Front where he conceived the idea of this Memorial.
“He imagined it would be three things: it would be the memorial to our fallen, it would be a museum housing the relics – as he called them – these things that told stories, but he also imagined it would be an archive. And that’s what we’re here to formally open today – the place, the building, that houses the thoughts, the deeds, the words of our soldiers and our sailors and our aviators.
“He didn’t just want us to know what they did and where they did it – he wanted us to know how they felt when they were doing it.”
The CEW Bean Building and Research Centre is open from 10 am to 4:30 pm, Monday to Friday, and 1 pm to 4:30 pm on Saturday.
