ANZAC Day Special Edition

As I write Anzac Day is coming to a close. For the non-Australians in the audience Anzac Day is the national day of remembrance in Australia, the 25th April marking the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in WWI. Over 2,000 Australians lost their lives on that single day, and over the course of the campaign over 8,709 Australians died. The day is generally marked with a dawn service to correspond with the time the Australians first went ashore.

Today we attended a dawn service at Adelaide River, about 120k south of Darwin. You might think this to be an unremarkable place for a dawn service, but as it turns out it is pretty special. Here is the war cemetery that was created especially to bury the servicemen who died during the Japanese bombings of Darwin and in the Timor Sea battles during WWII. So here lie the only Australians to die on their own soil in war (excluding the indigenous people which is another story altogether). A total of 434 military and civilian personnel are buried here, almost all Australian, but there was also 1 Canadian.

The cemetery is an absolutely beautiful place. Green, lush and peaceful: with a carefully manicured bronze plaque marking each grave. The service was packed and very moving. The birds started singing before the service began. A young 12 year old girl played the last post. The local school choir sang. Moving speeches were made by politicians, military and veterans. Both Dennis and I shed a tear or two. I’ve put below the words from a poem written by a Vietnam Vet which was read at the service…pretty much shredded me so have your hankies ready.

After the service the community welcomed everyone to the Showgrounds for a free breakfast and a couple of games of two-up. A big and very eclectic crowd was in attendance – military, scouts, locals, travelers and the NT chapter of the Hells Angels bikies.

There is one thing we have noted in so many places on this journey and failed to mention previously, and now seems a fitting time to share it with you. As we pass through the small towns and remote parts of Australia we have been struck time and again by the terrible toll that war has taken on this country, especially WWI. So often we have sat having lunch in some park and noticed the plaque commemorating the locals who died serving their country and it is shocking to look around and figure the total population of this place can’t be more than 100 and yet 20 young local men died in WWI. I know that WWI was terrible in its human toll, but somehow it feels so much more real when you realize how it must have decimated these tiny communities. We were reminded today that Australia was only 14 years old when the ANZACS landed at Gallipoli – a difficult start for a young country and all in the name of territorial squabbles on the other side of the world.

We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn about 5 days ago, and there is no question that we are in the tropics now – hot, steamy, lush and lots of frogs in the toilets. More about that in our next edition, in the meantime we both wish you a peaceful and serene Anzac Day!

And now here’s that poem I promised earlier:



HE WAS A MATE

He was a mate, a real good mate 'e was,
A friendly sort of feller, liked a joke;
And if it had to happen, it's a shame
It had to happen to such a decent bloke.

But - ah, fair dinkum, don't it make you wonder
What God in Heaven's thinkin' about up there;
The way He chooses who to sacrifice
To me somehow it doesn't quite seem fair.

You'd think He'd want to take a bloke like me
Who'd be no loss to no-one here on Earth;
But no, He always seems to pick the best
Whose life amounts to ten times what mine's worth.

But I suppose He'd say it's not His fault,
It's us and how we treat our fellow man;
And if too many good blokes' lives are lost
We can't just blame it all on His great plan.

He slung us here on Earth and said "Righto,
Get on with it you blokes, the world is yours";
But all we've done is fight among ourselves
And destroy each other with our endless wars.

Now, there's a sort of aching here inside,
I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong;
But a soldier can't afford to feel this way,
He's got to grit his teeth and carry on.

So how's a bloke supposed to deal with this?
I know they trained me well, I can't complain;
But this is somethin' you don't learn about
When they teach you how to play the soldier's game.

They teach you how to shoot and how to kill,
You even learn which enemy to hate;
But nowhere in their training do you learn
How to live with the loss of a real good mate.


                                  Lachlan Irvine