Thursday, April 25, 2013

Anzac Day 2013


Today is Anzac Day here.  There were Dawn Services throughout Australia honouring Australian and New Zealand servicemen and women who served and died in conflicts starting with the Gallipoli campaign in WW1.   When I was a youngster in the 1950s,  there was not the interest in Anzac Day that there seems to be now.   As as member of the Boy Scouts back then it was almost obligatory for us to attend the Dawn Service at Fremantle war memorial.  It usually gathered a crowd of around 150 or so.
Today as I drove our son to work in Fremantle at 6am, we passed ceremonies at two memorials and judging by the number of cars parked up every side street, there must have been thousands of people attending.  

In this morning’s newspaper there is a photo of an retired SAS Commander who is now a politician who ‘urged vigilance so that nationalism, the toxic by-product of patriotism, does not rear its ugly head on Anzac Day’. 

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