New Zealand history: Anzac memorials throughout Auckland

There are many places to go to remember this Anzac Day, from grand memorial monuments, to quiet coastal lookouts. Photo / Getty Images

Not all war memorials are sober cenotaphs. Peter Dragicevich takes a tour of some of the more unusual and useful memorials scattered around Auckland.

If you need a demonstration of the trauma that World War I inflicted on New Zealand, you need only ponder our abundance of war memorials. Even the smallest towns have them, often with lists of the fallen which seem entirely out of proportion to the size of the settlement. WWI was a conflict that left a staggering 6 per cent of the entire population injured or dead, so it's no surprise that the post-war mood was for monuments with gravitas that respectfully reflected the collective grief. Mostly this took the form of sombre plinths and obelisks, and it's around these that many of us will have gathered to see in the dawn tomorrow.

Although they may get a bit misty-eyed on Anzac Day morning, Kiwi veterans are, by and large, a practical bunch. But it wasn't until after WWII that projects that memorialised the dead by providing something useful for the living became more common.

One early example that demonstrated that respectfulness and recreation could be successfully combined was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Completed in 1929, it was designed by Grierson, Aimer & Draffin, an architectural firm helmed by three former servicemen, two of whom had been wounded at Passchendaele.

You certainly couldn't argue that this magnificent building is lacking in gravitas. Inscriptions and bas-reliefs on the exterior clearly signal its memorial status, while Māori motifs are cleverly incorporated into the ornamental plasterwork inside. The entire top floor is devoted to "War and Remembrance", with its centrepiece, the WWI Hall of Memories, serving as a secular shrine. This space has the grace of a cathedral, complete with stained glass, a marble altar and the names of hundreds of fallen Aucklanders etched into its walls.

The cenotaph out the front was modelled on Sir Edwin Lutyens' original, which had been unveiled nine years earlier in London's Whitehall. Famously, the Kiwi architects couldn't afford to buy the blueprints, so Keith Draffin went to the movies every night for a week to make sketches based on newsreel footage.

Following World War II, Draffin teamed up with his son to tackle the extension, which doubled the size of the building. You have to look closely at the exterior to spot the point where the Portland stone of the original gives way to carefully disguised cement. Another shrine was added for the fallen of WWII, which has been expanded to include the names of service people killed in subsequent conflicts. A poignant inscription heads one of the few blank walls: "Let these panels never be filled".

Yet memorials don't have to be grand to be touching. On the St Heliers waterfront, a drinking fountain honours a local scoutmaster killed in action in 1916. Nearby, an arc of black granite with wooden seats built into it invites us to 'Rest and Remember' the fallen from six conflicts, from the Boer War through to Vietnam.

There are further memorial seats up the hill at Te Pane o Horoiwi (Achilles Point). The remarkable views, the carved pou and the monument to the HMS Achilles (which played a pivotal role in the Battle of the River Plate) vie for attention, but it's the plaques on the two white seats that are most affecting.

The first was donated by Private Ted Scherer in memory of his friend Sergeant Douglas O'Stanley, a pilot who died while serving in England in 1940. The second was donated by Ted Scherer's dad in honour of his son, who died fighting in Italy five years later. Both men were in their 20s and buried in different countries, yet are united in memory at this beautiful lookout.

In 1947 the old New Lynn Borough Council commissioned a highly functional memorial square complete with a kindergarten, library, Plunket rooms and sports facilities. The rebuilt New Lynn War Memorial Library is the centrepiece today, along with 12 red-brick columns supporting a pergola under which roses have been planted.

In the 1950s, Mt Wellington opened a large War Memorial Park on the banks of the Tāmaki River (incorporating sports grounds, changing rooms and a pavilion), Onehunga built a popular War Memorial Swimming Pool and Howick a nifty 16-sided War Memorial Community Centre. It wasn't until 1965 that Titirangi got its War Memorial Park, including a wonderful wood-lined community hall and library.

Perhaps the most quintessentially City-of-Sails monument of them all is an unassuming structure at Narrow Neck Beach. It's hard to imagine a more fitting memorial to a bunch of enthusiastic local sailors than the sweet little Memorial Starting Tower that the Wakatere Boating Club erected in 1960, in honour of a staggering 10 of their members who died during WWII.