On 2 November 1993, an unnamed war grave, chosen at random from Adelaide Cemetery in Villers-Bretonneux, France, was carefully exhumed. After confirming the soldier was Australian but otherwise unidentifiable, his remains were flown to Sydney in a chartered Qantas aircraft, then laid in a coffin made of Tasmanian blackwood.
He lay in state at Canberra’s Old Parliament House for four days before, on 11 November, being carried along Anzac Parade by gun carriage. Finally, a military bearer party bore the coffin, bedecked with a bayonet and sprig of wattle, into a tomb inside the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial.
