Well the ANZAC Day Dawn Service this morning was certainly different to past ANZAC Days under the current social distancing laws. It feels like yesterday but it was last year we were at Port Elliott in South Australia with Sue and Andrew Christie and you can see from the photo below the difference in the gathering then to this year.

There are a number of ex-servicemen here in the park and we could not do nothing on this day, so we decided we’d have our own small service in the caravan park on the front drive, with all the people here in lockdown in the park.

It was a great service, everyone was mindful of social distancing (even though we share the same toilets and showers). Some of the kids did Poem readings, we had Ash Williamson, a singer songwriter who sang his own composition which was excellent and of course the normal service activities, the Last Post, Minute’s Silence and Rouse. We finished the service with the National Anthem and then we had a gunfire breakfast in the camp kitchen. All up we had 70 people attend “our” service in the park but just outside the park was a coffee van and all the local people who ordered their coffees, stayed for the service as well, standing just outside the park fence. They commented to me after the service, they were a bit envious of the “community spirit” we have in the park

It was a great service, one of the best I’ve been too. Probably because it was a small community all in the same situation who banded together, young and old in remembrance. We were fortunate I suppose to be able to do such a service in “our” drive way, when so many others could not. It will be an ANZAC Day to remember for many reasons but my lasting memory will be the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach, 50 metres behind me during the playing of the Last Post, very moving!

Lest We Forget.