Australia is a relatively young country; only becoming a unified nation in 1901 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012). A young country is no different from a young one; identity is a problem. Questions are asked about who I am and where I stand in the world, and unfortunately they are often not answered until tragedy strikes. National identity is the sense of a nation and its people as a connected whole. This feeling of cohesion can be shaped by many events in a nation's history, but especially by war. War is a stressful and traumatic affair that forever changes, not only the people who go there, but the nation as a whole. Many consider the Great War to be the tragedy of Australia in which we became a nation (Bollard, 2013) with our modern identity. Of course it is naive to believe that Australians only developed an identity after the First World War, but it is true to say that it was changed forever. Before Australia became the Australia known today, it was a land of rangers, farmers and convicts; a penal colony that had the ambition of becoming a self-governing nation with unified defense and transportation*. Prior to federation Australia had fought in the Sudan and the Boer War to provide support to the homeland as it was considered a heroic feat that was something of a rite of passage (Australian War Memorial, n.d.) and there was a global perception of who and what the Australians were. After federation people were very consciously intent on becoming a great nation (Bean, 1993), but not completely severing ties with Britain as most foreign policy was based on what the British government dictated (Rickard , 1992). began, Australia entered the war as a nation that not only endured but was valuable to many…… half of document……m.gov.au/atwar/Austin, R. (2005) . Gallipoli encyclopedia. Rosebud: Slouch Hat PublicationsBean, CEW (1993) Anzac to Amiens. Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia Ltd.Bean, C.E.W. (2010). The ANZAC book (3rd ed.). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Bollard, R. (2013). In the shadow of Gallipoli the hidden history of Australia in the First World War. [EBL]. Retrieved from http://www.eblib.com.au/Department of Veterans' Affairs (n.d.). Corporal Albert Jacka. Retrieved from http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/5environment/vc/jakka.htmlMacDermott, D. (1993). How we see you. In D. Grant & G. Seal (Eds.), Australia in the world (pp. 86-91). Perth: Black Swan PressRickard, J. (1992). Australia: a cultural history. New York: Longman Inc. Seal, G. (2007). ANZAC: Fear in the layman. Journal of Australian Studies, 31(91), 135-144. doi: 10.1080/14443050709388135