Robert McFarlane
Dawn service, Anzac Day, Thirroul, NSW c. 1978
Gael Newton AM 2026
Photojournalist Robert McFarlane was best known as the doyen of film and theatre stills photography in Australia and as a photography critic and writer. Back in 2004 he had been reviewing his documentary archive and Dawn Service was from a group of works from the early 1960s–70s acquired by the National Gallery.
Looking through the images in McFarlane’s archive it was noticeable how he returned again and again to Anzac Day marches and subjects that evoked an ‘older’ simpler pre-war Australia. McFarlane had commented that his literate and musical parents had a strong sense of family and extended community which translated in his own work to an empathy with their generation.
McFarlane had also sensitively documented the subcultures of the younger generation and his own contemporaries, amongst a broader platform of social issues such as indigenous leaders and communtities.
Dawn service was a self-elected assignment of special significance for McFarlane as while he had photographed many Anzac Days marches he had never made it to a Dawn service. He was intrigued by the association with Thirroul on the south coast and British writer DH Lawrence who spent time in Australia in a cottage in the seaside hamlet in 1922.
Perhaps it was McFarlane’s own love of words and writing that made him stay up all night so he wouldn’t miss gathering of local veterans on the 25th April 1978.
Gael Newton AM
Updated in 2026, based on a previously unpublished piece
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