Across the country on Anzac Day coins will go flying into the air as Australians bet on heads or tails, shouting out “come in spinner”.
All it takes is two coins and a kip (the wooden paddle to flip the coins) to play and take part in the more than 100-year-old tradition of two-up. From Gallipoli to the Western Front, Diggers played two-up to pass the time, and since then the game has been revived on Anzac Day in homage to those who fought in WWI.
“Two-up became very firmly established during the First World War amongst the Australian troops,” Craig Tibbits, senior historian with the Australian War Memorial told Central News.
“It’s a very simple game really, when the troops had downtime between battles all it took was two pennies to get it underway.”
By the 1930s, two-up had taken off as a regular Anzac Day tradition.
“When those Diggers returned to Australia, they not only brought their game home but also the mateship forged in the trenches of Gallipoli and the Western Front,” Hallie Donkin from RSL NSW said.
“When Australians gather across the country to remember our fallen, we want people to take the time to consider the historical significance behind the annual traditions associated with ANZAC Day, in particular two-up, which served as more than just a game and has become a part of our national identity.”
But, it was actually not the Anzacs who invented this game.
“Back in Roman times they called this game ‘ship or head’ because some coins had the head of the Emperor on one side and a ship on the other,” Tibbits said, adding that games of chance involving coins had been played throughout history.
“This game was popular among convicts in the 1790s, also on mines and goldfields during the mid 1800s. It was a simple game that was well established by the time of the First World War.”
After being popularised by the Diggers during WWI, two-up is now strictly reserved as an Anzac Day tradition. It is illegal to play it on any other day of the year across Australia except for two towns – Kalgoorlie in remote Western Australia and Broken Hill in far Western NSW – both of which gained an exemption to licence the game after local protests.
The kip and the coins. Source Wikimedia.
In Sydney, the Australian Heritage Hotel located in The Rocks hosts one of the largest two-up events in the country on Anzac Day.
“Throughout the day we have several thousand people coming through, with the capacity to host around two and-a-half thousand people,” Andrew Dallas, from the Australian Heritage Hotel said.
“We shut down Cumberland Street and Gloucester Street so we can merge our Anzac Day crowd together with the Glenmore Hotel.”
RSL NSW called for people looking to toss a coin this Saturday to also take the time to reflect on the service and sacrifices made by veterans during the various wars fought in by Australians.
“This Anzac Day, when we say, ‘come in spinner’, we’re also saying ‘It’s time to give a ‘toss’ about our veterans and their service,” Donkin said.
Main image: Come in spinner: Australian soldiers pass the time in Papua New Guinea in 1944 playing two-up.
