engineering

Sir John Monash Centre

Sir John Monash Centre is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sir John Monash Centre rather than just read about it. In short: The Sir John Monash Centre is a museum and interpretive centre that commemorates Australian servicemen and women who served on the Western Front during the First World War. The centre, located near the village of Villers-Bretonneux (Somme) in northern France, is set behind the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial and within the military cemetery.

Key takeaways

Sir John Monash Centre belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sir John Monash Centre to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sir John Monash Centre from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Sir John Monash Centre is a museum and interpretive centre that commemorates Australian servicemen and women who served on the Western Front during the First World War. The centre, located near the village of Villers-Bretonneux (Somme) in northern France, is set behind the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial and within the military cemetery. The centre opened in April 2018.

History The Australian Government first proposed an Australian Visitor Centre on the Western Front at Le Hamel in 1998, but the project was abandoned until it resurfaced eight years later. The design of the Sir John Monash Centre was unveiled by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on 26 April 2015, the day after Anzac Day, following an international design competition won by Cox Architecture. The centre is named after General Sir John Monash, who led the Australian Corps on the Western Front in 1918. The A$100 million cost was met by the Australian Government. The centre's opening was in 2018, the centenary year of the end of the war, with the official opening ceremony held prior to Anzac Day, 25 April.

Official opening The centre opened to visitors on 16 April 2018. It was officially opened by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on 24 April 2018, saying "This new centre expresses our gratitude for all our men and women who fought—and continue to fight—for our values and our interests. And in the midst of the stone, and steel, and glass of this serene monument, we know that the best way to honour the diggers of 1918 is to support the servicemen and women, the veterans and the families of today." Also in attendance was French Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, who paid tribute to Australian diggers, "We will never forget that 100 years ago, a young and brave nation on the other side of the world made history by writing our history" and, in recognition of Monash, said his tactics had given the allied forces a critical advantage.

Description Located behind the Villers-Bretonneux memorial, and built partially underground and with a turf roof, the one thousand square metre centre is designed to be "subservient" to the war memorial and has been described by one of the architects, Joe Agius, as "almost an anti-building, connected to the monument from an abstract and geometric point of view". Australian war artists Lyndell Brown and Charles Green designed a major tapestry, Morning Star which was created by the Australian Tapestry Workshop and hangs in the museum's foyer. The centre tells the Australian story of the Western Front in the First World War. Through a series of interactive media installations visitors are able to use their own mobile device, loaded with the SJMC App as a 'virtual tour guide', throughout the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, the Australian National Memorial and the Sir John Monash Centre. The Sir John Monash Centre forms part of the Australian Remembrance Trail along the Western Front, which links sites of significance to Australians, including battlefields, cemeteries and other memorials.

Controversies Due to a change of government in 2015, with Malcolm Turnbull replacing Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia, a controversy arose with regard to the cost of the Sir John Monash Centre. Members of the community expressed their concerns about the hefty price tag of the new centre. The Abbott government had committed a $100 million to the project (about 60 million euros), a budget many times superior to those that had been necessary to build the British and Canadian centres at Thiepval and Vimy. As a result of this controversy, the cost of the SJMC was subjected to an inquiry by the Australian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works in June 2015. During the inquiry, Department of Veterans' Affairs' representatives highlighted underground building and cutting-edge new technologies as the main factors that justified the $100 million budget. A second controversy that arose from the SJMC's construction pertained to its visitation rate. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs had claimed before the construction of the centre that it would attract about 110,000 visitors a year. Within a few months of the opening of the SJMC, it became clear that the centre would not meet that target. The Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled “$100m Monash Centre on track to miss visitor target by many thousands”, which prompted other articles on the matter. The French press reported that from April 2018 to April 2019, the centre received 54,000 visitors, around half as many as DVA had expected. This attendance is modest compared to that of other war museums and visitor centres on the Western Front such as those at Péronne, Meaux, Ypres, Vimy or Verdun for example. The majority of visitors to the SJMC are Australians.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sir John Monash Centre

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sir John Monash Centre claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sir John Monash Centre before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sir John Monash Centre ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sir John Monash Centre

In research: Sir John Monash Centre appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sir John Monash Centre in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sir John Monash Centre is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Australian military memorials, Australia–France relations, Buildings and structures completed in 2018, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sir John Monash Centre outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sir John Monash Centre in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sir John Monash Centre means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sir John Monash Centre out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sir John Monash Centre in simple terms?

Why does Sir John Monash Centre matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sir John Monash Centre?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sir John Monash Centre.