The Melbourne Museum is currently holding an exhibition of items from WW1. It commemorates the Centenary of the First World War.

All of the items come from the IWM (Imperial War Museums) in London and they are first to ever leave Great Britain and visit Australia. There are over 350 precious artefacts including the artillery piece that fired the first shot of WW1. The exhibits range from small scale personal items to large objects such as horse-drawn ambulances, a massive trench mortar and bits of pieces of aircraft.  The visual displays are stunning – movies from the battlefields,  photos of munitions factories and scenes of British cities of the day.

This exhibition takes you through a number of different displays. The first describes the lead up of political events that caused the war to begin. Then there are a series of displays that you reach through a simulated line of trenches – each showing a different aspect of how the war was conducted. It ends, fittingly, with a display of the ways in which people resumed their day-to-day lives and the ways in which the war was remembered. 

This is a wonderful exhibition and well worth seeing. I recommend it to everyone who has a predecessor who fought in the Great War. It is on for a very short time at the Melbourne Exhibition Building.

These images are some of my recollections of the time I spent at the Exhibition.