By Geoff Barnes*
When the Australian War Memorial was conceived in the aftermath of World War I in the 1920s, a key part of the collection was to be a series of dioramas. These would be meticulously researched and painstakingly sculpted three-dimensional representations of important moments in Australia’s military history, set in painted landscapes, capturing moments in time in a way that photographs, films, paintings or cases full of artefacts could never achieve. (From the Naval Historical Society of Australia.)
