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The Australian digger on Sydney's Anzac Bridge has been joined by a Kiwi in a ceremony that invoked transtasman ties, plans for an Australian memorial in Wellington, an impromptu haka and a touch of controversy as a group of New Zealanders were denied access to the invitation-only function.
Dedicated yesterday by Prime Minister Helen Clark and New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma, the New Zealand statue is slightly taller than its Aussie counterpart on the northern side of the bridge, courtesy of the lemon squeezer hat crafted by New Zealand-born sculptor Alan Somerville.
Mr Somerville, born in Dunedin and a farmer until moving to Sydney in 1988, also made the statue of the Australian digger, unveiled on Anzac Day in 2000.
The bases on which the statues stand contain sand from the beaches of Gallipoli.
The new statue joins the Australia-New Zealand memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, until yesterday Australia's only statuary marking the traditional ties between the two countries.
An Australian equivalent will be erected in the Anzac garden planned for the tomb of the unknown warrior in Wellington.
As dignitaries, diplomats and war veterans from both countries gathered under brilliant blue skies, a group of New Zealanders hoping to watch the ceremony were blocked from the bridge, which was closed to public access for five hours.
One of those, Kate Waterhouse, said: "Thousands of us pass this place on our way to work each day and many who had come to watch shed tears - but from the roadway below because the public had been removed from the bridge an hour earlier.
"Shame on the NSW Government."
Mr Iemma later said the access had been limited to invited guests for security reasons.
But he said the 4.2m bronze statue of the World War I New Zealander represented ties with Australia's "truest and greatest friend".
"The Aussie digger no longer stands alone," he said. "As of today he shares the watch with a very appropriate companion - a Kiwi digger, joint sentinels of the gateway to the nation's greatest city."
Mr Iemma said the two statues embodied the same spirit - a spirit forged not by politicians and diplomats but by soldiers, many of them "hardly more than kids", in the horror and sacrifice of war.
Helen Clark said the two nations' shared remembrance day was deeply symbolic of the times since the first day of the Gallipoli campaign that New Zealand and Australia had served together.
As the Last Post faded into a minute's silence at the end of the ceremony, an RAAF Hawke jet trainer blasted low across the bridge and a group of guests performed an impromptu haka.
