Our hearts swell with pride: Numbers of Melburnians attending the dawn service at the Shrine grows

THE Shrine is the altar of our secular church. Its siren call grows louder each year. No one orders these people to wake, some at 3am, for the dawn service.

THE buses on Birdwood Avenue roar in one after the other, each crammed with passengers clutching coffee cups or children. It might be the Spencer St terminal on a particularly biting day, if not for the strains of bagpipes that greet each delivery, and the blurs of military uniform.

It is 5am, an hour before proceedings are to begin, and yet these arrivals are the stragglers. The decent perches were nabbed long ago. Perhaps these people had scoffed at official suggestions that they turn up 90 minutes early, or at predictions the crowd would surpass last year’s record of 50,000.

Yet the Shrine is the altar of our secular church. Its siren call grows louder each year. No one had ordered these people to wake, some at 3am, to trek through grass that ices the feet, and to jiggle in a cold that numbs the joints.

The neon signs in the distance yesterday morning were reminders of the other world to which they would return. The dawn service itself was timeless, ritualised in solemnity, little changed to services five or 10 years ago _ more hoodies in the crowd, perhaps, and fewer pairs of trakky-daks.

Melburnians turned out in droves for the dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance. Picture: Nicole Garmston

In 1998, there were 10,000-14,000 at the dawn service. Yesterday, the estimate was 60,000. And to think the Shrine was once a problem child, built after World War 1 in a muddle of funding and political woes.

The crowd spilled down the slopes and into the trees. Afterwards, they streamed down St Kilda Rd, many gawking at the hot-air balloons above.

Their number matched the Australians losses in the Great War. The linked hands and families gave meaning to oft-repeated rhetoric about the bloom of a generation lost.

Before the service, the flare of Eternal Flame dwarfed that of dozens of phone screens. None flickered during the service itself. If there were selkies, they were for afterwards.

Many high-ranking politicians loitered on the Shrine’s forecourt. Not one was allowed near the microphone. In this, the dawn service stands apart — even the Gallipoli Service has been corrupted by speechmakers who, with the best of intentions, bang on about the meaning of Anzac.

As always, the volleys of rifle fire, followed by the floating wafts of cordite, triggered the imagination. The blasts rang out during a recital of Abide With Me. Each crack broke the song and jagged the nerves and set the mind to the Gallipoli razorbacks, or the Kokoda jungles, or an Afghanistan field _ wherever the listener’s heart was aimed.

The moon above, a crescent lifted from the Turkish flag, was not the only nod to Gallipoli. A blimp was taking aerial photos. Blimps were common off the peninsula in 1915; their purpose there was more sinister.

Later, about 11,000 veterans and descendants marched down St Kilda Rd.

The turnouts offered an antidote to confected debates about Anzac commemorations. As someone once said, if Australia Day is when we wonder who we are each year, perhaps Anzac Day is when we find the answer.