Making the Shrine

A tender and funny graphic novel exploring the soul of a city’s most treasured monument.

The Shrine of Remembrance has been an everyday sight in the living memory of all Melbournians. But while everyone knows its purpose, not everyone knows the many stories that have surrounded it for a century. The competition for its design, and the eleventh-hour campaign that forced it into existence. The community enterprise that helped to fund it. The hardship and struggle that came with its creation. Throughout it all, the constant battle to define what it represents to the people of Victoria.

This graphic novel is a sequence of stories seeking to explain the meaning of the Shrine across time, both to its architects and supporters, and to the many Victorians who contributed to its creation, and to those who have visited, violated and venerated it since. Some of the stories are individual and intimate; others are public history from the archives. In Laura J. Carroll’s words and pictures, the building’s many lives are brought into focus in new and exciting ways.