Rodney Campbell's Blog

Red Poppies line the halls which mark the Rolls of Honour at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

The Flanders poppy has long been a part of Remembrance Day, the ritual that marks the Armistice of 11 November 1918, and is also increasingly being used as part of ANZAC Day observances. During the First World War, red poppies were among the first plants to spring up in the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium. In soldiers’ folklore, the vivid red of the poppy came from the blood of their comrades soaking the ground.

Poppies adorn the panels of the Memorial’s Roll of Honour, placed beside names as a small personal tribute to the memory of a particular person, or to any of the thousands of individuals commemorated there. This practice began at the interment of the Unknown Australian Soldier on 11 November 1993. As people waited to lay a single flower by his tomb in the Hall of Memory, they had to queue along the cloisters, beside the Roll of Honour. By the end of the day, hundreds of RSL poppies had been pushed into the cracks between the panels bearing the names of the fallen.

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

I assisted with my daughters schools multi day school excursion/camp to our nations capital city (Canberra) – looking after the children and taking lots of images for the parents and the school 🙂 – here is one of my daughter alongside the Memorial’s Roll of Honour festooned with the red poppies for the fallen.

Red Poppies

NIKON D7000 + 85.0 mm f/1.4 @ 85 mm, 1/160 sec at f/2, ISO 100

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