Bay to Baghdad, Diggers done proud – ALP CONFERENCE: [1 All-round Country Edition]
Stuart Rintoul, Additional reporting: Greg Roberts, Dan Box, Sarah Elks, John Stapleton, Verity Edwards. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 26 Apr 2007: 5.
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Abstract
At Byron Bay, the dawn service was attended by surfies in boardshorts and bare-footed hippies in sarongs and faded jeans. In Melbourne, the MCG filled for the now traditional AFL match between old foes Collingwood and Essendon. On the Gold Coast, theday began with a rock concert and if there was some consternation, it was not shared by former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove.
“We had some of our coalition partners from the US and UK and indeed from Turkey with us,” Brigadier Crane said. “I invited them to just pause and reflect for a moment on the part they themselves are playing now in continuing to build the Anzac legend and to spare a thought for their mates elsewhere in the theatre and in Afghanistan and around the Gulf.” He said there was a 5km “fun run” and games of two-up, a cricket match and barbecues; while in Afghanistan, soldiers commemorated Anzac Day with two cans of beer and a meal served up by their officers.
In Canberra, Governor-General Michael Jeffery warned against running down the defence force and said Australians should strive to regain the values of service before self, close communities, honesty and fair play, a firm and practising belief in the essential spirituality of man, a sense of responsibility and a commitment to cohesive and loving families as the core of a just and caring society. These, he said, were the values Anzacs fought to preserve.
Full Text
A BAGPIPE plays Waltzing Matilda and the old soldiers step forward again. The streets are lined with people clapping, although their eyes search the ranks for veterans, rather than those who march to honour them.
From Byron Bay to Baghdad, it was a day for memories and mateship, hymns and morning prayer, but also a celebration of what it is to be Australian.
As the first rays of sun struggled to break through the clouds over Australia’s most easterly point at Byron Bay, World War II veteran Ken Rogers, 85, traded memories with Vietnam veteran David Lawrence, 71. Mr Rogers said the one thing he remembered clearly wasthe day he was demobilised. “Everything else is a bit of a blur,” he said. “But on that day, it was all over at last and we could go home.”
At Byron Bay, the dawn service was attended by surfies in boardshorts and bare-footed hippies in sarongs and faded jeans. In Melbourne, the MCG filled for the now traditional AFL match between old foes Collingwood and Essendon. On the Gold Coast, theday began with a rock concert and if there was some consternation, it was not shared by former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove.
“When these questions get asked of me about whether an activity is appropriate on Anzac Day, I say what would the Diggers lying in their graves think,” he said. “I always think that they would be quite happy if, after the observances and after the reverence shown through dawn services, and marches and services of the like, I’m sure they don’t want Australians to go indoors and stare at thecurtains.
“I think they want Australians enjoying a holiday and to enjoy some of the freedoms that their sacrifice has ensured for those generations. If pubs are open, why can’t people go to a concert as well? I am relaxed about that.”
In cities and country towns and on old battlefields, large numbers of Australians again turned out for the dawn service. At Gallipoli, about 8000 people gathered on the slopes around Anzac Cove.
South Australian Governor and one of Australia’s best-loved athletes Marjorie Jackson-Nelson, the “Lithgow Flash”, made her first pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Anzac legend.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson urged Australians to shine a light “into dark corners of the world” and described Australia as a nation whose values were “etched less in granite and marble than they are in our flag, a slouch hat, the army rising sun and a smile that says `G’day mate, can I give you a hand?’.”
But there was also criticism of Australia’s involvement in Iraq.
At the dawn service in Adelaide, Anzac Day committee chairman Bill Denny said the original Anzacs would be proud of those now serving in the Middle East, but saddened by the “indiscriminate slaughter in which we’ve become mired”. “In nine short weeks, thewar in Iraq would have been waged longer than World War I with questionable progress and no end in sight,” he said.
“Many eminent authorities argue that Western leaders have mismanaged much of the war against terrorism and in doing so they may have broadened its reach and made it longer.”
In Baghdad, Australians were joined by US, British and Turkish coalition partners for a dawn service on the roof of a building within one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.
In what the commander of the joint Australian taskforce in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brigadier Michael Crane, called a poignant and memorable occasion, a US soldier played the Last Post on his bugle while a Scot played the bagpipes.
“We had some of our coalition partners from the US and UK and indeed from Turkey with us,” Brigadier Crane said. “I invited them to just pause and reflect for a moment on the part they themselves are playing now in continuing to build the Anzac legend and to spare a thought for their mates elsewhere in the theatre and in Afghanistan and around the Gulf.” He said there was a 5km “fun run” and games of two-up, a cricket match and barbecues; while in Afghanistan, soldiers commemorated Anzac Day with two cans of beer and a meal served up by their officers.
In Canberra, Governor-General Michael Jeffery warned against running down the defence force and said Australians should strive to regain the values of service before self, close communities, honesty and fair play, a firm and practising belief in the essential spirituality of man, a sense of responsibility and a commitment to cohesive and loving families as the core of a just and caring society. These, he said, were the values Anzacs fought to preserve.
In Sydney, where the march was led by two riderless horses, with boots reversed in their stirrups, one group was marching in their own formation for the first time. These were the Under-16s, men who lied about their age and joined up to fight in World War II. Now aged in their late 70s, the two dozen men got a huge cheer from a crowd five-deep in places as they passed the Town Hall.
There was also a Coloured Diggers march, which set out from the Redfern neighbourhood known as The Block and ended in a church service at St Saviour’s Anglican church in Redfern, where the families of veterans told of discrimination they had suffered in pubs and RSL clubs.
At Sandakan in northern Borneo, scene of the World War II “death marches”, West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter remembered his great uncle, who was among the 2400 who died.
In the Victorian country town of Bendigo, Anzac Day was observed by 108-year-old John Campbell Ross, a wireless operator who enlisted in 1918, never saw active service but nevertheless remains Australia’s only surviving World War I veteran.