Anzac Day - Dawn Service 25/4/10

Ninety-five years after the Gallipoli landing we remember...

I've just arrived home from the Anzac Day Dawn Service. It’s warm and overcast, and in town it’s foggy. I thought I could get a nice photo of sunrise on Anzac Day, but it was not to be.

The crowd at the Dawn Service was great to see. It's a small country town and there were easily over 100 people there.

The homily was wonderful. The Reverened spoke of love, and what it is, and how a special love of comrades and country is what has given us our freedoms, and that such hard-won, costly freedoms should not easily be given away. I’m going to see if I can get it, but I suspect it was only with a few notes and “off the cuff”.

I should carry a notebook with me, to write down my thoughts.

After the Dawn Service the local RSL hosts a Gunfire Breakfast. At the breakfast all serving and ex service members are welcome to eat a breakfast prepared and supplied by the local Lions group. Bacon, eggs, snags, baked beans, bread, tea, coffee, rum. Yes, rum. It is a tradition that rum is provided for addition to coffee for/with breakfast after the Dawn Service.

Reading some of the information in the links I provided yesterday about Anzac Day I was surprised to see that Australia is unusual in its War memorials and commemorations as we not only remember the dead, but celebrate and honour those who came back. British War Memorials are only dedicated to those who fell. In Australia any town which had representatives in any war has a war memorial.