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The Unknown Soldier arrives back on Australian soil

Australia lost more than 61,000 soldiers during the Great War, more than in any other war since. One of those soldiers - despite the best efforts of the War Graves Commission - ever to remain unidentified was buried in Adelaide Cemetery, just outside the village of Villers-Bretonneux in France. On November 2, 1993, his remains were exhumed to be returned ceremoniously for burial in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

His departure was marked with tributes from France, Belgium, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Australia, and the remains of this unknown soldier were flown by helicopter to Paris.

Then the remains were flown back to his homeland on a specially named Qantas 747, 'The Spirit of Remembrance'. On arriving at Sydney airport on the morning of November 7, the coffin was ceremoniously transferred through guards of honour from Australia and France onto an RAAF Hercules flight to Canberra. In Canberra the unknown Australian was borne on a gun carriage from the aircraft to King's Hall in the Old Parliament House, there to lie in state until the ceremonies of November 11, 1993.

The final and most important ceremony began on the morning of November 11, exactly 75 years after the end of the war in which he had fought. It was on this day that he was to be entombed in the Hall of Memory in the Australian War Memorial, coming to be officially recognised as a poignant and powerful symbol of all Australians who have died in war.

Of those 102,000 on the Memorial's Roll of Honour, a representative one thousand of their names were read in a three hour vigil by school children early that morning. In this funeral ceremony, he was accorded the honour given at the funeral of a Field Marshal.

The Unknown Soldier was borne on a gun carriage, followed by a cortege of soldiers bearing uniforms from some of the wars in which Australia had fought. Part of this group was a nurse wearing an old-fashioned uniform and representing all the suffering endured by Australian women in war. A symbolical 300 of the 63,000 members of Australia's armed forces formed part of the procession. The coffin was laid on the Stone of Remembrance as the chief pall bearer and then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, read the eulogy.

A few minutes before 11am, the coffin was lowered into the tomb and the Last Post and Reveille were sounded. Upon the return of the funeral party to the parade ground, the National Anthem was sung by all dignitaries and the attending 25,000 members of the public. Following the ceremony, all were invited to pay their respects, filing past the tomb.

Over the next three days, the general public paid their tributes at the rate of over one thousand per hour. The tomb was then sealed with a one-and-a-half tonne Turkish marble slab.