A new roof is sparkling under the sun at the Australian War Memorial, and unlike most roofs around the world made of copper, this is expected to stay like this for quite a while.

The big crane that was looming over the building’s iconic green dome has come down and the new Anzac Hall, to the rear, is now shielded from the elements.

We’re used to copper roofs here in Canberra, not only at the War Memorial but also at the Shine Dome in Acton, the National Library of Australia on the lake, and the St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Kingston.

But unlike many other cities around the world, where pollution levels are much higher, ours take much longer to oxidise and turn green.

“For copper in Canberra to turn that green-coloured patina, it can take 50 years,” War Memorial executive project director Wayne Hitches says.

The copper of nearly all of Canberra’s buildings can be traced to ARC Roofing in Goulburn, and arrives “glistening”.

“It’s that shiny, reflective surface for a matter of weeks before it dulls off, and over a period of years, goes a sort of dark-brown colour and, over decades, green,” Mr Hitches explains.

Construction on the Anzac Hall back in October 2024. Photo: James Coleman.

Rumour has it that shortly after the main building was finished in 1941, workers used their urine to try to speed up the process on the copper dome.

But Mr Hitches “can comfortably say that was not something that happened”.

“It might be something for small domestic jobs where you want downpipes or something to turn green.”

The Australian War Memorial main building under construction in the 1940s. Photo: Australian War Memorial.

As it was, the dome gradually turned a drab black-brown colour and when looking from Parliament House up Anzac Parade, seemed to blend into Mount Ainslie behind, so the decision was made in the 1950s to treat it with a special chemical solution to turn it green.

“There are ways to accelerate that patina … and that solution was the best answer.”

But Mr Hitches says there’s “currently” no plan to apply the same solution to the new roof.

“The roof of the main building is the dark brown colour, and it’s taking its time to turn. Then there are places on the eastern side, which have a more green tinge to them at the moment, but the western side is taking longer to turn.

“The intent is to let Anzac Hall’s roof do the same thing.”

All up, the new roof covers an area 100 metres long and up to 35 metres wide in some places.

Being made of a material that might be “fairly attractive” to thieves, it was delivered to the site in batches and installed nearly immediately.

The design itself came about as part of a competition in 2019, and as with many elements of the War Memorial’s design, it has an inspiration.

The shape, the ridges, the pointy edges – it’s all a nod to the ‘Rising Sun’ badge worn on the slouch hats of members of the Australian Army.

“If you sort of overlay the ridges on the new roof and the spines of the glazed link cover, it’s exactly the same representation as the rising sun,” Mr Hitches says.

The Rising Sun badge. Photo: Australian War Memorial.

The hall is the last of the “big handover projects” in the memorial’s $550 million redevelopment project that kicked off in 2019 and is expected to open for visitors in the first quarter of 2026.

And visitors will sure be in for a treat.

“This one will give us the opportunity now to put a lot of the collection in, a lot of the things we wanted to, especially the contemporary conflicts,” Mr Hitches says.

The upper level will contain many of the items from the old Anzac Hall, while the lower level will be devoted to peacekeeping missions, as well as the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The Lancaster bomber ‘G for George’ is coming back to the War Memorial. Photos: James Coleman.

Then there are the big things, many of which are stored in the memorial’s warehouse in Mitchell and only visible to the public during the annual ‘Big Things in Store’ open day.

“We call them large technology objects, and of those, 20-odd will go in, and then we have over 1500 objects that will tell the story around these large objects and then another 1000-odd images.”

These include the Lancaster bomber ‘G for George’, the Midget submarine (a composite made up of two Japanese submarines hit during the attack on Sydney Harbour in May 1942) and, for the first time, a Chinook helicopter.