My son Davis (5) and I got up at the ungodly hour of 4.50am this morning, and braved the overcast cool to drive into Kings Park to be a part of the Dawn Service for Anzac Day 2006.

Anzac Day is a public holiday in both Australia and New Zealand, where our countries honour the bravery and sacrifice of the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and all of the others who have been to armed conflict in the interests of our countries.

30,000+ others decided to do the same thing, which meant we could hear most of it, but could hardly see the large screens they were projecting on, let alone see the real action.

My grandfathers on both sides of the family were in World War II and my great-grandfathers on both sides were in World War I, so it was a time for reflection and explaining to my kids what the day is all about. My generation are so lucky we didn’t face a world war during our conscription years, and I hope that none of our future generations need to see anything like that either.

I’m proud to see so many others getting along to events around Australia, and over in Gallipoli.

Image: Some of the crowd at State War Memorial Precinct, Kings Park, Perth.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.