As a nation, Australia’s first defining war on foreign soil took place far from our shores.
For most Australians, in the time before the outbreak of World War One, the Gallipoli Peninsula would have been unknown and distant.
Today, Aznac Cove looms large in Australia’s military history.
It is not surprising.
As the First World War unfolded, Australia was only just a teenager among the world’s nations.
It was just over a decade since we had formed into a nation.
We were six tiny British colonies, strung like distant outposts across a vast continent.
So, when Australian and Kiwi boots went ashore at Gallipoli in 1915, they were the pride – and hope – of our nation.
Mothers and fathers, wives and sweethearts, stood at wharves and watched them go.
They waved until the ships disappeared.
They went home and they waited.
But our first military foray as a nation did not go well.
The Ottomans held us back.
Eight long months of deadly, relentless fire, staring up at the cliff, nothing but a few metres of sand and death behind us, or in front.
Men, many of them merely boys, dying: in the water, in the mud.
Horses; a donkey.
It’s unsurprising: a teenage nation elevated our defeat into something sacred – into the founding story of who we are.
The Anzac achievement was heroic.
Those men endured things that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and they endured them with extraordinary courage.
For generations, that courage has meant an immense amount to Australia, and Australians.
It still does.
We have not forgotten their sacrifice.
We will never forget who they are.
But national stories are shaped by those who tell them – and shaped by the times in which they are told.
Greeks know this well.
The very word for story – mythos – has its origins in Greece.
And you know better than most how stories grow with the retelling, and how, over time, details can become hazy, simplified, or shaded over.
The nation that began to shape the Anzac story from 1916 was a different country to the one we live in today.
It was a country that defined itself by its Britishness and for many years that notion was integral to how we understood our founding act of military service.
But it wasn’t just British Australians who went ashore at Anzac Cove.
In 2026, we acknowledge now that the background of those who fought under the Australian flag in 1915 was far more complex than our national myth initially admitted.
We acknowledge now that thousands of Gurkhas, Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus fought at Anzac Cove.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders did, too – men who loved this country so deeply they were willing to die for it, even as that country had not yet found the grace to fully recognise them.
And importantly, there were also Greek Australians who fought for Australia.
Fought for Australia in the land of their forebears.
By chance, this first overseas battle, so defining for Australia, took place in a corner of the Mediterranean Sea with strong historic connections to Greece.
So much so that in 1915, there was a significant Greek population living in the Gallipoli region prior to the war – ordinary families, farmers and fishermen, who found their world torn apart by forces far beyond their control.
And through the First World War, Greece, and Cyprus, played a pivotal role in the Allied efforts.
The Cypriot Mule Corps – Greek and Turkish Cypriots serving side by side, together, in support of the Allied war effort. Men who put shared purpose above ancient division.
Likewise, during the Second World War, the Cyprus Regiment, who in Churchill’s words 'served honourably on many fields from Libya to Dunkirk'.
This year marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Crete – and I note the Royal Australian Mint last month issued coins commemorating Australian service in the Mediterranean Sea.
And I also want to acknowledge the Australian peacekeepers who served under a United Nations flag in Cyprus between 1964 and 2001 – who stood between communities in conflict and held the line for peace.
Tonight we commemorate the contribution that Australian, Greek and Cypriot people have made through acts of war service.
Because in 2026, Australia does not define ourselves by Britishness.
We are a proud multicultural nation.
Our population is made up of contributions from all over the world – and every one of those contributions carries with it a history, a story of service, and sacrifice.
And that means that there are Australians today whose ancestors fought in many different ways through the terrible conflicts of the 20th Century.
We acknowledge the Australians whose Greek and Cypriot ancestors fought during the First World War, whether they fought for the ANZACs at Gallipoli, or whether they were part of British regiments, or other Allied forces.
Some Australians have ancestors who served at Gallipoli.
Some have ancestors who served on the other side.
In 1915, as the Anzacs were making their fateful landing at Gallipoli, across the water, Greece was neutral in that conflict.
Greeks – and Cypriots – were wrestling with an agonising question: whether or not to join the war. Whether to send their own sons into that furnace.
By 1917, Greece abandoned its neutrality, and fought with the Allies.
As we stand here tonight, we know that some of these people, too, are our ancestors.
They might not have fought for Australia in 1915.
But a century on, their children’s children – your children’s children – look back with pride, and with love, on the contribution their ancestors made.
That shouldn’t surprise any of us.
More than 40,000 Australians have Cypriot ancestry.
Cypriots – and Australians, too.
Around three-quarters were born in Australia.
Close to a quarter were born in Cyprus, with significant groups from England and South Africa as well.
They came here carrying their histories with them. Carrying their griefs and their glories. And they gave those histories to Australia.
Thanks to the research and continued learning, a wider audience is now able to understand that some of Australia’s heroes were serving, then, in different ways.
Some for the Anzacs.
Some for the Greeks.
Some for the Allies.
Some for the Ottoman Empire.
Because our modern truth is that with Australia made up, in 2026, of people from all over the globe, there is no one place – no single story – that holds all of our histories, that tells all of our sacrifice.
So tonight, we honour the sacrifice and service of Australia’s cherished Cypriot community.
Wherever they served, we know that bravery doesn’t know any ethnic or cultural boundary.
That for all people, sometimes we are called on to defend that which we cherish.
And in modern Australia, that heroic spirit comes from many places, in stories told in many languages.
Tonight we remember the Cypriots who served with and alongside Australians.
Tonight, their stories are our stories.
Tonight, those people are our people.
Lest we forget.