We created this poster to commemorate Remembrance Day in 2026. Our poster features the Remembrance Day service in Perth, Western Australia, in 2024. The image includes a sea of red poppies, service personnel, members of the public and a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) flyover.
Wartime snapshot
The disruptions of World War I gave rise to a great flowering across the battlefields of Flanders, Gallipoli and France. Blooms of all kinds flourished in the disturbed soils. The 1915 diary of Australian soldier Rupert Nixon holds a fragile pressed flower with a pencil note that ‘the fields are covered with these poppies’. Others describe the ‘oceans of pretty flowers’ and ‘poppies red as blood’. Another soldier in Palestine notes that ‘after the early rains, the flowers appear’ and Rupert again, in hospital, wrote that ‘while others (fields) are a beautiful red with poppies & from a distance look like if a battle had been fought’.
The eye-catching red of the poppies on recent battlegrounds inspired John McCrae's poetic words, ‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row’. The blooms stood for the almost incomprehensible number of lives lost. As his 1915 poem continues, ‘We are the dead, short days ago, we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved’. This great blossoming seemed to so many a potent symbol not solely of loss but of love, regeneration and remembrance.
In this year’s poster, dense beds of handmade red poppies surround the Court of Contemplation at Kings Park with the Eternal Flame. Kings Park is a layered commemorative landscape with many memorials to different wars, conflicts, units and individuals.
Between the circle of poppies and the Pool of Reflection are recorded the names of West Australians awarded the Victoria Cross or the George Cross. Memorialised is Wing Commander Sir Hughie Edwards, who served in RAF 105 Squadron, Bomber Command. Edwards led a risky low-level daylight bombing raid on Bremen in 1941. He led his squadron through and back with gallantry and determination, although his aircraft was hit and 4 others were destroyed
Remembered here too is Private Percy Gratwick. Gratwick won his Victoria Cross at Trig 29 on Miteiriya Ridge in 1942, one of the hardest-fought actions of the Second Battle of El Alamein. As part of the 2/48th Infantry Battalion attacking a strong enemy position, Gratwick’s platoon was reduced to 7 men. Without regard for his own life and under heavy fire, Gratwick attacked one combat post with grenades, killing a mortar crew, then attacked a second with rifle and bayonet before being killed by machine-gun fire. His actions inflicted many casualties, unnerved the enemy and meant his company could take an important objective.
George Gosse, a Royal Australian Navy Reserve diver, was awarded the George Cross for Gallantry. Gosse cleared highly dangerous mines from Bremen Harbour in 1945. At great personal risk and in the worst underwater conditions, Gosse devised a way to safely defuse a new type of bomb called the Oyster, removing these when no other diver could.
From 1901, more than 1.5 million people have served Australia in wars and conflicts, and many more continue to serve in operations around the world. In many places like Kings Park, Australians gather on Remembrance Day to commemorate those who died or suffered while serving in wars, conflicts, and peace and humanitarian operations.
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
