Chapter 8 – Anzac Day

Travelling the vastness of the Australian continent, there was one defining geological and cultural thread binding the myriad of diverse scenes together. It is to Australian society what basement rock is to the continent’s integrity. That thread is granite, marble, and sandstone; its form the plethora of war memorials lovingly built in every city and town in memory of Australia’s war dead. These tall, proud sentinels maintaining their eternal vigil deeply move me whether at a remembrance service or simply passing them by in daily life. The starkness of their shape against the azure-blue Australian sky is as haunting as the tales of slaughter in their scroll of names is tragic. Passing by the Clermont War Memorial, after leaving Mellaluka to return to Sydney, memories came flooding back of an Anzac Day Dawn Service on a cool April morning in 1977. As a Patrol Leader in the local Scouts, I lay a remembrance wreath in front of the simple sandstone obelisk in what I remember as a very solemn occasion: an occasion I was not to know would play a key role in how my own life philosophy evolved. Reflecting on that particular Anzac Day, as I stood next to the same memorial in December 2002, my mind took me back to a small, nondescript cove on the other side of the world. The place from which Anzac Day originated all those years ago.