Yep, it’d have to be a tiny town to not have a war memorial. If there’s no war memorial there’s probably an honour bord with the names of the fallen in the hall or RSL. Since ANZAC it’s been a part of Australian culture that those who died in service of their country is a sort of sacred thing. It’s significance has ebbed and flowed a bit over the years. Our pride in the services was especially damaged in the Vietnam war years, when ANZAC day crowds shrunk quite a bit and you could have imagined at the time that it might all die out. It’s had a bit of a resurgence since.

After most big wars, the federal government has put a bit of money into war memorials, and it was pretty much just a matter of the local RSL or town council writing a letter to get a decommissioned artillery piece of some sort, or an old torpedo for the local park as a centrepiece for your ANZAC day ceremony. Also, if you read the plaques on 1950’s or 60’s buildings in the bush, you’ll often see many of them are “War Memorials”. War Memorial swimming pools and sports grounds are common ones. The reason communities did this is that at the time donations to “war memorials” were tax deductible.

You’ve made an interesting observation. For Aussies this is probably something they’ve never noticed. It’s probably not an indication that we’re very war worshipping, just that for a small country, the deaths involved in the wars we’ve been part of were significant, and perhaps especially so for little country towns where the surnames on the honour board match some of the street names and the bloke you were just chatting to at the post office.