A gift to the Nation - Bellona. (Boadicea or Bodie as known by locals) In 1916, sculptor, Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal, offered one of his unsold pieces of sculpture, cast in 1906, as a gift to Australia and as a tribute to the valour of our Australian soldiers in the Great War. This was his bronze bust of War, also known as the Goddess of War, Bellona. The Government agreed to accept the gift in January 1916, but it could not be despatched until after the war, when it arrived in Melbourne, on 7 March 1920. Bellona’s relocation to Canberra was fraught with much protest and disagreement, in 1926. It appeared few politicians enjoyed Bellona’s busty company. She was installed, on a demeaningly ugly concrete plinth, but in a very public place, in front of the Albert Hall. In 1954 her removal meant that the Queen (on her first visit as Queen) and the Duke of Edinburgh didnt have to get a blush-making glimpse of her. She was bewilderingly moved hither and thither between 1954 and her restoration to the Albert Hall in 1992. She had a spell in the Parliamentary Triangle and another in the governor-generals estate at Yarralumla where she (Bellona, not a governor-general) was positioned so that she could scowl belligerently at the Scrivener Dam. Bellona can now be found in the Sculpture Garden, at the Australian War Memorial, since 7 August 1999.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 08:25:42 +0000
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