Kerry Watkin shares her story as third generation veteran
Thousands gathered across Mackay to commemorate, including a young girl wearing the medals of her Boer War veteran great great grandad and an Afghan vet honouring mates no longer here
Mackay
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An estimated 7000 students marched the CBD streets today with Mackay RSL Sub-branch President Ken Higgins claiming it as “one of the best Anzac Days” he has seen in the region.
But while it stands as a day of remembrance, for some, it’s their only chance to catch up with fellow veterans.
As a high school cadet, Cole Wilz felt a sense of pride seeing the WW1 and WWII veterans march the streets on Anzac Day in 1960.
But that pride fostered a whole new meaning when he joined the 6th battalion Royal Australian Regiment in 1965.
By August the following year he was in South Vietnam facing an enemy outnumbered 13 to one.
“We were heavily moored on the night of the 17th and we didn’t realise until the 18th who was there, 1300 viet cong coming towards us,” he said.
It became known as the Battle of Long Tan, and Mr Wilz remembers it like the back of his hand.
“We sent 113 men to have a look at what was going on,” he said.
“They got pinned down and we couldn’t get where they were to help them because we couldn’t get the radio missions through.
“When we did late in the arvo, we just went out with the helicopter and armored personnel carriers and got ‘em out of there in a hurry.
“On return (Anzac Day) became a lot more meaningful for me to understand what’s it all about,” he said.
“It’s something I don’t miss.”
For Mr Wilz, today is about seeing old friends and remembering those who aren’t with him anymore, whether they were left behind on the battlefield or at home.
“Also I get to know about a few people who passed away in the last couple of years,” he said.
“Our big group of 60 is getting very, very small.
“Pretty shocking really but that’s what happens in life, you pass on.”
“You go back to the mates that you lost and didn’t get a chance to say hooray they were blown away and that’s hit.”
‘I try to honour those memories’
For Afghanistan veteran Jackson Lewis April 25 wasn’t just about remembering the past - it’s about honouring the mates no longer here.
The 28 year old was stationed in the Middle Easter, mostly out of Kabul, with the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment.
He shared that some of his fellow unit members had lost their lives, not in combat, but to their own battles with mental health.
They are the ones he thinks of when he stands in silence every Dawn Service.
“I try to honour those memories,” Jackson said.
On the left side of his chest he wears his own medals representing the Greater Middle East Operation, four years service award and Afghanistan medal.
On the right side are his great grandfather’s WWII medals, which had been passed down through the family.
“I feel proud... coming from that lineage,” he said.
Jackson said he usually went to the Hay Point Dawn Service and had watched it “getting bigger and bigger every years”.
“It’s good to see a lot of people in the community coming down,” he said.
Bagpipers Ian Duncan and Harrison Lamb played the lament at the Hay Point morning service as members of the community laid wreaths for the 110th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.
As he played Ian proudly wore a replica of his father Gordon Duncan’s Kokoda medals. “I wear then in honour of him,” he said.
The originals were kept framed on a wall in his home with a photo of his dad.
He said his father had arrived at Kokoda “near the end of all the fighting”.
“They were the last... then they come back after that,” Ian said, adding when his father spoke about it he always focused on the funny memories.
Like one time before the unit came home they had been on the beach and decided to have a surf carnival.
“And they made uniforms... a towel, a belt and a hat,” he said. Laughing that when they had competed, the towel came off.
“There was no ladies there,” he said.
“He used to talk about things like that.”
Wearing the medal was incredibly important for Ian, who said, “I get emotional over it.”
His father had formed lifelong bonds during his service.
“A lot of his mates, until the day he died were still people he’d served with,” Ian said.
Harrison wore his granddad’s great uncle’s WWI medals, who he said was a stretcher bearer with the British Army named Harry Collins.
He said his family were still learning about the history.
Harrison, 21, said he had been playing bagpipes for about 12 years. He initially played in Mackay, before he began playing in Hay Point since about 2015.
He said the beachside service always felt “close and tightknit” regardless of how big the crowd.
Half Tide Dawn Service organiser and Vietnam veteran Tom Andrews said that for him, Anzac Day is about honouring the generations of his family who served and the legacy they left behind.
“I’m a veteran, but today’s not for me. This is for my grandfather, my two great uncles, my father, my uncles and I’m at the bottom of the tree as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
“It’s all about them. They are the ones that forged the Anzac memory, they achieved so much for our country.”
Tom wore the medals of his grandfather Percival Pacific Andrews , a Gallipoli veteran who went on to France where he joined his two brothers. Tom said his grandfather fought for the entirety of WWI.
“Our family was extremely lucky, they all come home,” he said.
“One of my great uncles was severely wounded from gassing.”
He returned home about 12 months after WWI finished.
This is who he thought of during his minute silence.
He said the small Hay Point community always turned up in force to pay their respect.
“We’ve had guests from as far afield as Western Australia and southern states. It’s an honour to have them attend and come back,” he said.
Tom joined the Royal Australian Navy when he was 15 years old and at 17 he was posted to HMAS Sydney.
“At that age, I know it was a warzone. We didn’t see what the diggers saw on shore, the battles and all the carnage,” he said, adding for him at that age enlisting had been an adventure.
He was with in the for nine years and said “if I was 17, I’d do it all over again”.
“It really hammers home what a great country we live in,” he said.
The connections he made during his service remain strong.
“You don’t see your old shipmates that often... because you’re from all over Australia.
“There had been 175 recruits in his division, we were all strangers and through that service you meet a lot of wonderful people. They’re mates for life.
“You learn how important mateship is.”
‘We’re very lucky to have the medals’
Millie Thomsett proudly stood before the Half Tide Memorial lovingly wearing a replica set of her great grandfather’s WWII medals on the right side of her chest.
Her mother Nell Thomsett became emotional when speaking about the replica medals belonging to her husband’s grandfather Alec Dent, which they’d only recently obtained.
This was the first year attending a Dawn Service with the medals, Ms Thomsett said.
“We’re very lucky to have the medals because his whole battalion was wiped out in a battle, but he had malaria (at the time) so he wasn’t in that battle,” she said.
Millie said she was very proud to wear the medals today because Anzac Day was about respect and honour.
Ms Thomsett said the original medals were passed down to each oldest grandson.
“I was able to catch up with them last year to be able to get all the information to be able to get the medals,” she said.
Like the hundreds gathered around the beachside memorial, overlooking the horizon, Ms Thomsett believed the Hay Point Dawn Service was moving, emotional and always felt very personal.
“It’s just such an important day, not just for the Gallipoli campaign but for current and past serving members of all the armed forces,” she said.
Her family had been coming to Half Tide for the past six years, but the memorial has existed for at least 25 years originally just a pile of rocks with a cross and flag pole where the then-local servicemen and women community would gather every April 25 to pay their respects.
Resident Jason Hargraves and his brother-in-law Rob Tandy, whose families were involved in starting Hay Point Dawn Service.
“We just started off with a pile of rocks and a cross in the middle of it, there was only about 15 or 20 people there … and it’s just grown,” Mr Hargraves said.
The more permanent memorial was built about 10 years ago, Mr Hargraves said, adding it was amazing to watch how the service had grown over the years.
“It just blows me away every year,” he said.
Mr Hargraves wears his uncle’s grandfather’s WWI medals. He said his uncle had passed them onto him a few years before passing away.
“I wear them with pride,” he said.
‘They held their ground’
Hundreds gathered in the shadow of the Farleigh Mill as a troop of veterans arrived to the cenotaph for the Farleigh-Northern Beaches RSL sub-branch Dawn Service.
Sub branch president Mark Siddall said “we gather before the dawn because they did”.
“They held their ground through courage, perseverance, determination, self-reliance and above all mateship,” Mr Siddall said.
Member for Whitsunday Amanda Camm chose to share a lesser-known story from the Gallipoli campaign, that of Australia’s first submariners, the crew of the AE1 and AE2.
While AE1 disappeared with all hands off the coast of Papua New Guinea, AE2 was the first allied submarine to successfully penetrate the Dardanelles and was a key fighter in the Gallipoli campaign.
“We are unlikely to think of those men on AE2 … they all deserve a place in our Gallipoli story,” Ms Camm said.
Speaking on behalf of families affected by war was a man who lost his father to the conflict in Iraq when he was just one week old.
Max Cashin’s father, Brendan Hurst, was a former police officer who travelled to Iraq in 2007 as a contractor to help rebuild the Iraqi police force.
He died at the age of 38 when he and former Townsville soldier Justin Saint were killed by an IED travelling to Baghdad.
“Growing up as a son without a father with a single mother who lost her partner, Anzac Day, Police Remembrance Day … became days of great significance from a young age,” Mr Cashin said.
“My mother did her best to ensure I grew up knowing my father’s legacy and his sacrifice.”
Coningsby State School student Aria Woodley wore the medals of an Anzac almost four generations past, her great great grandfather George Dodds who fought as part of the British army during the Boer Wars.
He then returned to Australia and re-enlisted in 1916, spending three years fighting in France as a platoon commander.
George Dodds took a wound in France but returned to the front lines and a month before the Armistice he was shot in the chest by a sniper, dead at age 42.
He now rests at Tincourt New British Cemetery in France and was visited by grandson, and Ms Woodley’s grandfather, Jeffrey Dodds.
‘It was really hard on me’: From veteran’s daughter to navy service
For third-generation veteran Kerry Watkin, Anzac Day has always been an important day to honour and respect service men and women and thank them for their protection.
Ms Watkin joined the navy at just 18 years old which she said made her father very proud.
He was a veteran himself, serving at the end of World War II, then in Korea for two years, and in the Vietnam War as was his father who served in World War I and II.
It was this deep connection to service that led Ms Watkin to be asked to be the guest speaker at the Mackay Anzac Day Dawn Service this year.
She had been preparing for the service by working to find out more information about her father and grandfather’s time in the army.
She learned her grandfather, like many others at the time, had put his age up so he could be deployed; he was wounded slightly but fought through in World War I.
He later dropped his age and changed his name, because he was in his early 40s by that time, so he could then be deployed in World War II.
She said he was sent off to Egypt before going to Crete where he was captured by the Germans, spending about four years as a prisoner of war.
While this was happening Ms Watkin’s father, who was just 18, put his hand up to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the army.
He was sent to Cowra Prisoner of War Camp and was caught up in the Cowra breakout of the Japanese prisoners of war before being discharged.
After Ms Watkin was born her father was told he would be going to Vietnam.
She said being raised with his being away often, the children did not see this as anything out of the ordinary.
“He wasn’t going to war, we didn’t see it as that, we just saw that he’s just doing his job,” she said.
He arrived home from Vietnam when Ms Watkins was 13 and faced many challenges.
“I said to mum, this is my dad, but that’s not my dad,” she said.
“He just came back a different man, traumatised.”
He hated the idea of leaving the army because he loved it so much but he could not go back to Vietnam, she said.
“There was no help, we used to say people on the outside, civilians, didn’t understand what they’d been through, my parents went through hell from people, abuse, my brother used to get into fights at school, defending his father,” Ms Watkins said.
“It was really hard on me, I just thought I had to get away from him.”
Despite this and with his encouragement she joined the navy which she said was an incredible experience and she wished she had been involved for longer than four years.
“It was pretty surreal.”
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