Anzac Day at Home

Commemorate from Home

Due to the ongoing Omicron outbreak, we knew many New Zealanders would want to commemorate from home. This page brings you a range of additional ways to engage in remembrance.

For information on this year's in-person services at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, click here.

Things to do

Explore creative ways your household can get involved this Anzac Day

RECIPE

Bake Some Anzac Biscuits

The Anzac biscuit is not only a beloved baked treat, but a delicious way to commemorate New Zealand's service men and women. From our Documentary Heritage collection, taste an iconic part of New Zealand's culinary history with this recipe from 1924.

CRAFT ACTIVIY

Make your own poppy

You can create your own poppy at home! We've put together two different methods for making poppies using whatever you have in your craft box and a little Kiwi ingenuity.

GET CRAFTING

ARTICLE

Learn to talk like an Anzac

Just as words like 'lockdown' and 'bubble' have come to define our COVID-19 lives, war spawned a new, often times humorous, language to describe the miserable, dangerous and peculiar world that soldiers found themselves in. Discover some of the phrases coined by WWI soldiers - some you may still use today!

ONLINE CENOTAPH

Place a virtual poppy

This Poppy Day, you can honour those thousands of New Zealand servicepeople without known graves, by laying a virtual poppy on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

LAY A POPPY

Things to watch

Discover Auckland Museum's original videos

VIDEO SERIES

Life as a young Anzac soldier

In this Auckland Museum original miniseries, learn what life was like serving for New Zealand in WWI from a first person perspective.

Watch more

TIMELAPSE

Centenary Dawn Service

2015 marked 100 years since the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli. As part of the centenary commemorations, a timelapse video was filmed showing the sunrise over the Dawn Service.

PLAY

VIDEO

The Last Post Bugler

Every day at 5pm the Museum plays 'The Last Post' to signal closing for the day and to reflect our place as a War Memorial. Former Mayor of Howick Morrin Cooper tells us about recording the performance over 15 years ago and why the bugle was used during wartime.

PLAY

Things to read

As Auckland's War Memorial Museum we work year round to commemorate our service personnel through new articles and stories.

1922 - 2022

100 years of Poppy Day

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Poppy Day. The red poppy has become a symbol of war remembrance the world over, and New Zealand they are worn in the days surrounding Anzac Day, but where did this tradition come from - and what does it mean?

LONG READ

Standing Corrected

Remembrance isn't always set in stone. Learn more about our ongoing dedication to commemoration to New Zealand's service personnel with the story behind the fascinating process of corrections and additions to the names chiselled into the walls on the Rolls of Honour.

ANZAC DAY 2021

Women at War

Discover stories from Online Cenotaph for Anzac Day 2021, commemorating two significant events involving servicewomen: the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) on 16th January 1941, and the 75th anniversary of the arrival of Jayforce in Japan.