Live at the Anzac Bowl
Apr. 25th, 2004 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringIt starts about four in the morning, when the street is normally deserted. Not a stream, not yet, but an increased traffic flow - beads on the string of slumber as car after car hums past, each one telling you that you have to be up and about.
Five to five and I'm showered, a hot cuppa inside, banging on the kids' doors to let them know that we'll be off in five minutes. Just time for a shave and then we're gone, taking the back way because there will be blocks and jams on the main drag further up. There's a stream of people walking across the field opposite the War Memorial and we join the flow. Traffic is blocked on the cross street and the traffic lights are turned off. We wait for a bus full of veterans, each with a chest full of ribbons and then we dodge a u-turning taxi to walk up the slope.
At the top, we look to our left. The temporary grandstands where we sat last year are packed. Not a seat left. So we find a spot on the rim of that great grassy arena and stand there, moving restlessly in the predawn cold. The place is full of people and more are streaming in. Buses pull up and scores of passengers step down, joining in the flow. There are uniforms scattered here and there around us on the slope - Canberra is Defence HQ and everyone turns up for the Dawn Service. Knots of cadets from the Royal Military College and the tri-service Australian Defence Force Academy stand nonchalantly in their best uniforms, buffed and polished, their enthusiasm and energy rising like a mist above them.
And still the people pour in. The great bowl under the gum trees is one solid sea of people. Those on the parade ground before the Stone of Remembrance can't possibly see anything bar the heads of those in front and the grey stone slabs of the Memorial ahead of them, Mount Ainslie rising darkly behind. And yet there are more coming.
The lights go out, one by one, unobtrusively and you notice that the crowd is becoming less a collection of individuals than one amorphous mass, lit here and there by those with the foresight to bring candles. A roll of drums and the service begins. As with every year, we are reminded of why we are here - for us the First World War began when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli in Turkey as part of the ill-fated Dardenelles campaign. A dawn attack and the boats driffted off course into a region of steep scrubby slopes, all overlooked by the enemy, much like this early dawn amphitheatre 89 years later.
A hymn, then all eyes turn to the space between the two tall pillars of the Memorial where a lone bugler is spotlit. He lifts his instrument and once again we hear the thrilling, wailing strains of the Last Post. The final note trails off and there is a minute's silence. Absolute silence in the gloom where thousands upon thousands of Australians are gathered, heads bowed. A baby giggles a long way off and there are sounds of cockatoos and kookaburras even further away.
Usually the great white cockatoos swing and whoop through the solemn service, chasing each other through the air, acting the galah and yelling to each other as they soar and swoop. And each time I am reminded of the young soldiers who sailed away those many years ago, each as exuberant and full of energy as these whirling white birds.
But not this year. This year they are playing somewhere else, somewhere out of sight. It is the Navy's turn to provide the chaplain this year, and it turns out to be an old friend of ours from HMAS Cerberus, who lived two doors down on the married quarter "Patch", his children of an age with ours. The Governor-General is also here, we later learn, playing no formal part, just part of the great crowd listening as we are told the tragic story of The Nek, where two thousand Lighthorsemen became casualties before breakfast in a doomed charge on the Turkish trenches. Five years later and their bones could be seen from the Aegean, pilled whitely together in a space little larger than a tennis court.
I can tell John beside me is moved - he brushes at his eyes and I'm feeling kind of choked up myself, thankful for the darkness. In Flanders Fields, recited by a young girl, whose Vietnam veteran father is at one with the dead of whom she speaks, and then the Ode, recited by a war widow - They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old - and again I think of those young diggers, full of enthusiasm and energy, off to see the world, and so many of them remaining in the mud of those Flanders fields, never to return to sunny Australia, except for their names carved on town monuments and on the neverending bronze lists that line the Hall of Remembrance where now the bugler is again visible, ready to sound Reveille.
And then the sun is making its presence felt behind the eastern hills, the words of the benediction are in our ears, and we are walking back to the car, thankful to be moving again, to get some warmth into our bones.
Five to five and I'm showered, a hot cuppa inside, banging on the kids' doors to let them know that we'll be off in five minutes. Just time for a shave and then we're gone, taking the back way because there will be blocks and jams on the main drag further up. There's a stream of people walking across the field opposite the War Memorial and we join the flow. Traffic is blocked on the cross street and the traffic lights are turned off. We wait for a bus full of veterans, each with a chest full of ribbons and then we dodge a u-turning taxi to walk up the slope.
At the top, we look to our left. The temporary grandstands where we sat last year are packed. Not a seat left. So we find a spot on the rim of that great grassy arena and stand there, moving restlessly in the predawn cold. The place is full of people and more are streaming in. Buses pull up and scores of passengers step down, joining in the flow. There are uniforms scattered here and there around us on the slope - Canberra is Defence HQ and everyone turns up for the Dawn Service. Knots of cadets from the Royal Military College and the tri-service Australian Defence Force Academy stand nonchalantly in their best uniforms, buffed and polished, their enthusiasm and energy rising like a mist above them.
And still the people pour in. The great bowl under the gum trees is one solid sea of people. Those on the parade ground before the Stone of Remembrance can't possibly see anything bar the heads of those in front and the grey stone slabs of the Memorial ahead of them, Mount Ainslie rising darkly behind. And yet there are more coming.
The lights go out, one by one, unobtrusively and you notice that the crowd is becoming less a collection of individuals than one amorphous mass, lit here and there by those with the foresight to bring candles. A roll of drums and the service begins. As with every year, we are reminded of why we are here - for us the First World War began when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli in Turkey as part of the ill-fated Dardenelles campaign. A dawn attack and the boats driffted off course into a region of steep scrubby slopes, all overlooked by the enemy, much like this early dawn amphitheatre 89 years later.
A hymn, then all eyes turn to the space between the two tall pillars of the Memorial where a lone bugler is spotlit. He lifts his instrument and once again we hear the thrilling, wailing strains of the Last Post. The final note trails off and there is a minute's silence. Absolute silence in the gloom where thousands upon thousands of Australians are gathered, heads bowed. A baby giggles a long way off and there are sounds of cockatoos and kookaburras even further away.
Usually the great white cockatoos swing and whoop through the solemn service, chasing each other through the air, acting the galah and yelling to each other as they soar and swoop. And each time I am reminded of the young soldiers who sailed away those many years ago, each as exuberant and full of energy as these whirling white birds.
But not this year. This year they are playing somewhere else, somewhere out of sight. It is the Navy's turn to provide the chaplain this year, and it turns out to be an old friend of ours from HMAS Cerberus, who lived two doors down on the married quarter "Patch", his children of an age with ours. The Governor-General is also here, we later learn, playing no formal part, just part of the great crowd listening as we are told the tragic story of The Nek, where two thousand Lighthorsemen became casualties before breakfast in a doomed charge on the Turkish trenches. Five years later and their bones could be seen from the Aegean, pilled whitely together in a space little larger than a tennis court.
I can tell John beside me is moved - he brushes at his eyes and I'm feeling kind of choked up myself, thankful for the darkness. In Flanders Fields, recited by a young girl, whose Vietnam veteran father is at one with the dead of whom she speaks, and then the Ode, recited by a war widow - They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old - and again I think of those young diggers, full of enthusiasm and energy, off to see the world, and so many of them remaining in the mud of those Flanders fields, never to return to sunny Australia, except for their names carved on town monuments and on the neverending bronze lists that line the Hall of Remembrance where now the bugler is again visible, ready to sound Reveille.
And then the sun is making its presence felt behind the eastern hills, the words of the benediction are in our ears, and we are walking back to the car, thankful to be moving again, to get some warmth into our bones.
