The Anzac Day dawn service institution was an innovation that did not emerge until after twelve Anzac Days had already been commemorated. The first public ceremony at dawn, timed to mark the Gallipoli landing at 4.30 am on 25^th April 1915, was held at the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney in 1928. Initially a simple affair, it quickly grew in scale to become Australia’s foremost convention of war commemoration.

How did the instigators of the Sydney event establish a foothold in an already full program of annual public commemoration tradition? Why at this location? And, why nearly a decade after war’s end?

The answers to these questions are both surprisingly prosaic and deeply symbolic. Through a consideration of events leading to the occasion, and of the context of how Anzac Day was understood and commemorated at the time, a fresh understanding is uncovered, not only of the origins of the dawn service tradition, but also how it reflected, and transcended, the legacy of ritual practice during and after the Great War. The ninetieth anniversary of the 1928 ceremony provides a timely opportunity to re-appraise this moment in Anzac Day’s liturgical development.