When it comes to anti-war songs Bob Dylan pretty much had the market cornered in the early 1960s with such powerful anthems as his Masters of War and Blowin' in the Wind.
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But in the decades since, a couple of Aussie songsters have given the world just as poignant and penetrating works depicting the futility of war.
Perhaps the two best known anti-war songs penned by Australian artists would be Eric Bogle's And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda and Redgum's I was only 19, written by the band's leader John Schumann.
Both singer songwriters will be visiting Canberra separately next week to help commemorate Anzac Day.
Bogle will headline the Legacy Anzac Concert on Sunday at the National Convention Centre and will ensure his 1971 hit that has resonated around the world is on his playlist. Set in Gallipoli, the song describes the futility of war.
At the time, Bogle had recently emigrated from Scotland, and wrote his song after attending his first Anzac Day parade.
"I wrote it in Canberra when I first came to Australia. I wrote it in Newcastle Street in Fyshwick, when I was supposed to be working," he said.
"Anzac Day was quite a new experience for me. In the UK where I came from and where they've had millions of young boys sacrificed over the years, they don't put aside a whole day.
"It's just a couple of minutes every 11th of November and that's it. So I found the whole thing quite strange and quite moving."
Bogle wants his set to remind everyone of why they are at the concert.
"It will be a few songs, a few tears and then I'm off," he said.
"I want to do a couple of songs that pay tribute to the boys and also a couple of lighter songs as well.
"I wrote And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda after my first Anzac Day and I set it in Gallipoli because it is deeply embedded in the Aussie consciousness," he said.
"But the Vietnam War was going on at the time and there was this dichotomy of opinion and I thought if ever there was time for an anti-war song it's now."
Schumann's 1983 song I was only 19 is about Vietnam and packed a powerful punch immediately on its release.
It went straight to No. 1 and remained in the charts for 40 weeks.
Schumann will be in Canberra on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the song and deliver a message for the Diggers. An unplugged version of the song is being released on iTunes by ABC Music for Anzac Day.
The song was another that stopped people in their tracks the world over, yet Schumann described how his band didn't want to release it as a single.
"Redgum had only been playing 19 live for a little over a week and it was knocking people sideways," he said.
"We'd just played Tathra and then at Batemans Bay I was told that the band had had a meeting and voted and they didn't want to release it as a single.
"I thought that was funny because I was in the band and I didn't know about any meeting.
"But we didn't have any new songs and no money to record them anyway so 19 had to be a single if it was going to get out there at all.
"I was determined to record it and I did, but the only other band member to play on the song was Hughie McDonald, who coincidentally plays with me now in duos and with my band Vagabond Crew."
Schumann describes his biggest hit as a "get-it" moment for many Australians who hadn't stopped to think what Vietnam veterans had been through.
"I think that for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who bought the record, in some form it was a way of saying sorry to the veterans of the war," he said. "Sorry for not welcoming them home, sorry for not believing them when they tried to tell us they were crook, and sorry for not supporting them as we should have."
