Gallipoli has become a symbol of Australia's national identity, achievement and existence, according to Australian War Memorial principal historian Dr Peter Stanley.
Here's a weird thing. There's a battle, a long way from home and a long time ago. A lot of men are killed and wounded. It was a defeat and it didn't change anything. But we're still interested in it. Is that weird or what?
It is indeed weird. But not mysterious. For Australia, Gallipoli has become an important founding legend. It is attracting even greater attention as the 90th anniversary approaches. Why?
Australians entered the Great War welcoming conflict as a test of their nationhood. Their nation had been born amid prosaic debates and referenda, not in war. The troops who landed on April 25, 1915- almost all civilians less than a year before - wondered how they would meet the challenge.
In the event, the landing was a military disaster - it failed to meet its objectives. But merely hanging on in the face of determined Turkish attacks was triumph enough. Charles Bean, the Australian official correspondent, declared that with the landing on Gallipoli a sense of Australian nationhood was born. The idea took root.
Bean's The Anzac Book defined what came to be called the Anzac legend. It encompassed bravery, ingenuity, endurance and the comradeship that Australians call mateship.
Nations create the history they need. Gallipoli, though the basis of the annual ritual of Anzac Day from the early 1920s, remained neglected as an historical event. For 50 years after Bean published his definitive official history very few seemed interested in the Great War.
For a time, in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, it seemed that Anzac Day might vanish into obscurity, like Empire Day.
But an assertive Australian national identity has returned to affirm the connection between Gallipoli and nationhood. On the 90th anniversary of the campaign Gallipoli remains interesting still. The anniversary has generated books, films, ceremonies and pilgrimages. Almost as many Australians attend the dawn ceremony at Anzac Cove as the same number of troops which landed there in 1915.
The Anzac legend has become elastic enough to span very different emotions. Fervent nationalists can exult; pilgrims can mourn. All can ponder what made that group of Australians able to endure one of the greatest tests their nation has ever faced.
This massive interest might be the result of careful marketing, by schools, publishers, the media or government agencies. But it seems that while the expression of interest might be directed, the consumption of the products seem to reflect the popular interest rather than manipulate it.
Gallipoli, a minor, failed campaign (which cost less than a sixth of the Australian deaths on the Western Front) fulfils a need felt by many Australians to connect with or express their national identity. Much of what is said or written makes tenuous history - it presents a defeat as a victory of sorts, ignores some aspects and boost others, often with a distinctly anti-British spin.
It is dodgy history because it says as much about what Australians today feel about themselves as it relates to the events of the campaign. Gallipoli has become a symbol of Australia's national identity, achievement and existence.
This feature was written by Dr Peter Stanley for ABC News Online's Anzac Day coverage in 2006. At that time, Dr Stanley was principal historian at the Australian War Memorial. In early 2007 he was appointed director of the centre for historical research at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.