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As early as 1917 and then more seriously during the interwar period, museography becomes an important actor in the creation of representations of the First World War. Cultural and national specificities are fundamental to the way institutions and individual actors write about and choose to represent museographically the war experience. We thus show that the nature of the museum exhibit of public memory has less to do with the original event – and here the war itself – and more with the political context of creation. In the Australian case this means the choice of seeing the Great War as a first, founding experience for the young nation.