RSL: Veterans’ Clubs and Community Life in Australia

After living in Australia for a while, you often come across RSL Clubs in different suburbs. For someone newly arrived in Australia, the term RSL may feel a little unclear at first. It looks like a restaurant, a bar or a local community club, but it is not simply an ordinary place for food and entertainment. Behind it there is the tradition of Australian veterans, the memory of war, and a very local form of community life.

RSL stands for the Returned and Services League of Australia. It was originally connected with the settlement, welfare and protection of the rights of soldiers who returned to Australia after the First World War. Over time, it became one of the important veterans’ organisations in Australian society. It supports veterans, serving members of the armed forces and their families, and it is also closely involved in commemorative occasions such as ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day.

In everyday life, however, when people talk about the RSL, they are often referring to an RSL Club. These clubs are found in many towns and suburbs across Australia. They usually have restaurants, bars, cafés, live music and community activities, and some also have poker machines. Ordinary residents can go there for a meal, a gathering or a show. You do not have to be a soldier or a veteran. In this sense, the RSL Club is no longer only a place for veterans to meet. It has become part of Australian community life.

This is what makes the RSL quite distinctive. On one side, it preserves the historical meaning of war remembrance and veterans’ service. On the other side, it enters everyday life in the form of a local club. When you walk into an RSL Club, you may see photographs of soldiers, memorial plaques, medals and old wartime images on the walls, all reminding you of where the place comes from. At the same time, you may also see families having dinner, older people meeting friends, people drinking and chatting, or someone simply coming in for a reasonably priced meal. Its historical character and its ordinary daily character overlap.

The connection between the RSL and ANZAC Day is especially close. ANZAC Day, held each year on 25 April, is one of Australia’s most important commemorative days. It honours Australian and New Zealand service members who served and died in war. Across the country there are dawn services, marches and community gatherings, and RSL Clubs are often important organisers or participants in these events. For many Australians, ANZAC Day is not just a public holiday. It is a way of expressing national memory, military sacrifice and community identity.

There is also a well-known ANZAC Day tradition called Two-up. It usually involves tossing two coins and betting on whether they will land as two heads, two tails, or one of each. Normally, this kind of gambling-related game is legally restricted, but on ANZAC Day it is specially allowed or organised in many places. It is not just a simple game. It is tied to Australian military culture, wartime memory and the club tradition. When you are there in person, you can feel that it carries both a commemorative meaning and a direct, lively, slightly pub-like Australian folk atmosphere.

Of course, the RSL is not without controversy. Many RSL Clubs are now quite commercialised. They have restaurants, bars and poker machines, and pokies themselves are already a controversial issue in Australia. So the name RSL contains two different sides in real life. One side is veterans’ service, war remembrance and community support. The other side is club operation, commercial revenue and entertainment. To understand the RSL properly, it is best not to see it simply as a sacred commemorative institution, nor simply as an ordinary bar. It is more like a special space in Australian society where history, community and commerce are mixed together.

My first visit to an RSL Club was not long after I came to Australia. At that time I was working at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and one of my colleagues, Mark, was a veteran. On ANZAC Day that year, he invited me to a Canberra RSL Club to join the activities there. That was the first time I really entered this kind of local Australian community setting. Before that, I only had a vague idea that the RSL had something to do with veterans. Once I was there, I realised that it was not abstract Australian history from a book. It was made up of real people, a real club, a real commemorative day and real community activities.

That day was also the first time I saw Two-up. A crowd gathered around, watching the spinner toss the coins into the air, while people guessed heads or tails. The atmosphere was lively. For me, the experience felt both fresh and unfamiliar. It was not as solemn as a formal memorial ceremony, but it was not as casual as ordinary entertainment either. Behind it was a very Australian way of expression, mixing history, military tradition, pub culture and community life together. It was not especially concerned with formal solemnity, but it had a real sense of presence.

Later I gradually realised that to understand life in Australia, it is not enough to look only at formal structures such as government systems, urban planning, schools and hospitals. One also needs to look at places like the RSL. They may not be beautiful, and they may not feel refined, but they are truly embedded in Australian community life. A new migrant looking at Australia from the outside often first sees rules and institutions. But to really enter Australian society, one also has to pass through these concrete places and see how ordinary people remember history, gather together, eat, talk, and place national memory inside everyday life.

So for me, the RSL is not just a veterans’ club. It was also one of my early entry points into Australian society. Through Mark’s invitation, through ANZAC Day, and through that first experience of watching Two-up at a Canberra RSL Club, I felt for the first time that Australian culture was not an abstract concept. It was made, bit by bit, out of community spaces and everyday rituals like this.