Mackay region Anzac Day 2024 commemorations
For many Anzac Day is a ‘powerful reminder of the importance or unity and solidarity’. Lest We Forget. ROLLING COVERAGE
Mackay
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Former serviceman Bryan Lansdowne proudly wears his uncle’s medals on the right side of his chest every year on Anzac Day.
Ernest Eric Lansdowne had been a medical attendant when he was called for a tour at Papua New Guinea.
“They were flying the DC3 through the tops of the jungle, they’d get back to landing with bit of palm tree leaves stuck in the undercarriage … they were flying that low,” Mr Lansdowne said.
Ernest was also taken as a prisoner of war and held in Changi for six months.
“I helped him a fair bit after he come home … he come home and he weighed five stone,” he said.
“The first six months when he got home he spent in Greenslopes in Brisbane trying to get back some of his health.”
Mr Lansdowne, who joined hundreds of others at the Marian Dawn Service on April 25, also spent about five years serving in the Army in Australia including a three month stint in Charters Towers.
He believed honouring Anzac Day was very important “because of the work that’s been done by everybody else”.
“My father was also in the navy, but before the war started he finished his service … so he was lucky,” Mr Lansdowne said.
He said it was “most important” to keep the tradition alive.
After the service he was not shy about partaking in another tradition – rum and milk.
“Got to keep the standard up,” he laughed.
Not even his battle with cancer could stop former Royal Australian Air Force Sergeant Peter Gibbon from attending the 4.28am Anzac Day Dawn Service at Anzac Place.
“You’re not gone until you’re gone – you should live every day like it’s your last,” the Marian resident said.
He served for 21 years – between 1978 and 1999 – with the RAAF that included an almost three year tour in Malaysia in 1983 to 1986.
His role involved logistics, but he said 90 per cent of his time was as the NCO in charge of explosives and the compound.
“We trained to go on the second lot of Desert Storm but Stormin Normin stopped that, so we never actually went to that one,” he said.
Mr Gibbon was a senior corporal during his time in Malaysia, but had reached the rank of a sergeant when he left the air force.
“I got out as a full sergeant … I was one of the longest serving sergeants in the military at that time. Others have surpassed me now,” he said.
There was nothing more important than honouring his fellow servicemen and women, past and current, on Anzac Day, he said.
“It’s always been important … it’s disrespectful of me not to recognise and appreciate those who came before me,” he said.
Mr Gibbon shared he had been fighting cancer for the past 11 years and was currently undergoing chemotherapy.
“I leave here and will have chemo again,” he said
“But I’m not going to miss this because of my chemo.
“I’ve lost military friends and family over a long period of time, so I won’t disrespect them either.”
And every Anzac Day, his thoughts are with them and others.
“It can become an emotional time,” he said.
Every Anzac Day brings back memories for Bob Murray of his time fighting in the Vietnam War.
“I was a national serviceman called up in 1971,” the RSL Marian sub branch secretary said.
He did his tour with the 12th field regiment in the Australian Army, starting in A battery first before shifting to 104 battery “and served the rest of my time with them”.
The Vietnam vet was a gunner in the combat unit.
“Everyone shares a position but I was a number two. I actually got the fire it,” he said.
Mr Murray spent seven months in Vietnam before “they brought us all home for Christmas”.
“The war was starting to taper off when we went there. There were still a couple of nasty moments but we don’t mention them,” he said – including one where he said he did not think he would come home.
His was the last combat unit out of Vietnam and they led the Sydney parade back in Australia – including copping “a bit of sh-t from the protesters”, he said.
For him, Anzac Day means a lot “especially being in a combat unit”.
“We have reunions every two to three years all over Australia. So we get together again and it’s just like we never left,” he said.
“It’s very important to me.”
He added it was great to see how many children were involved and learning about the Anzacs past and present, to keep the stories and memories alive.
For former reservist with the Royal Queensland Regiment, John Edwards, Anzac Day is a “powerful reminder of the importance or unity and solidarity”.
“It brings us together as a community, regardless of our backgrounds or our religion,” the RSL Central Queensland District deputy president said.
“We come together to pay tribute to those who have served and to support those who continue to serve.”
He was joined by a huge crowd that gathered at Anzac Place at Marian for the 4.28am Dawn Service.
“In a world that is often divided by conflict and strife, Anzac Day offers a beacon of hope and inspiration,” he said.
“It reminds us of the power of courage, resilience and selflessness.”
“It reminds us that we are stronger when we stand together, and the values of mateship and the value of loyalty is as strong today as it was over 100 years ago.”
During the morning service Mirani State High School cultural captain Brooklyn Kerr gave a moving speech in which he said the Anzac inspired others to embody traits such as bravery, patriotism and mateship.
“Australia isn’t just a country or the ground we stand upon today,” he said.
“Australia is an idea, it’s the freedoms that you and I get to enjoy, the times that we spend playing footy with our friends.
“In essence Australia is our way of life.”
After the Marian March and Dawn Service, RSL Central Queensland District deputy president John Edwards headed to Kuttabul for their Dawn Service.
Joining him will be one of Mackay’s last World War II veterans Leonard Lister, who celebrated his 100th birthday in February this year.
“It’s great to have him there because of the younger generations,” Mr Edwards said.
“He’s one of the reasons that we show respect.
“You take a few minutes to reflect on what the previous Anzacs have done and what the Anzacs of the day are doing.”
Mr Lister has attended five decades of Anzac Day services and said they were a “very moving sort of thing, it brings back memories”.
“I think it’s getting more feeling in it than what it used to be, I attended a few things with my father who was a Gallipoli vet and it was not what it is today,” Mr Lister said,
“It’s much more meaningful today (especially) I think with the different conflicts we have today.”
Mackay dawn service
Despite the big crowd, a kookaburra’s cry was the only other sound heard as a prayer was read for the Anzac Day dawn service in Jubilee Park.
Mackay RSL Sub-branch President Ken Higgins spoke after the parade marched to the Cenotaph, heralded by the Mackay & District Pipe Band.
Mr Higgins thanked the community for coming, but said he wanted to take a special moment to recognise the service of one of Mackay’s last World War II veterans Norman Waterson.
“He’s certainly covered some country during the Second World War up in the islands north of Australia where he served with distinction,” Mr Higgins said.
“Norm, we’re so proud to have you here this morning, at 100 years of age, doing well.”
Mr Waterson sat front row surrounded by his family and was presented with a framed certificate in honour of his service.
Having signed up at age 18, Mr Waterson served as a scout fighting the Japanese in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.
He and Mr Lister are now the last ANZACs in Mackay who served during World War II.
Mr Waterson, who celebrated his 100th birthday in December, said later he “didn’t expect it” but “appreciated the amount of recognition he received”.
Mackay marches
From Canelands to Jubilee Park veterans of all conflicts, community groups and more than 6000 school students marched to commemorate the 109th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
World War II jeeps led the way, followed closely by supply trucks and even an Iraq War Humvee, but not all veterans were aboard.
A WWII veteran, who wasn’t marching for health reasons was making way to the park to be seated for the ceremony when a jeep driven by veterans pulled over and welcomed him aboard.
The parade stopped as he clambered aboard, starting back up with thunderous applause.
“We’re not here to celebrate war,” mayor Greg Williamson said in his speech ahead of the laying of the wreaths.
“We condemn war, a despicable stain on the human psyche.”
Mr Williamson recognised the great significance of the Day to Australia’s “secular democracy” saying “it is Anzac Day which is at the core of our national spirit.”
Ian Rowan presided over the ceremony and at 10:15am the crowd craned their necks as two Tigermoth Biplanes performed a flyover in honour of the day.
Veterans old and new gathered in the park to reflect on their service.
Andrew Collins spent 12 years of his life in the Navy, serving aboard the HMAS Adelaide.
“Anzac Day is all about sacrifice and respect,” said Mr Collins.
Mr Collins’ was deployed as part of the peace keeping mission in East Timor and had performed border protection operations in the conflicts “active zone”.
“I’m very proud to be here today.”
Wearing the red beret of a paratrooper, Digger Matthew Dennis’ thoughts were with the friends he’d lost in Iraq and East Timor.
“We were there to do our job,” Mr Dennis said.
Thinking of his friends and of all the veterans who never made it whom, Mr Dennis simply said “we’ll see each other again”.
Representing an older generation of veterans was John James Dennis, who served in Vietnam as an intelligence officer.
“My father served, I served and my sons served,” Mr Dennis said.
His father had fought in Papua New Guinea in World War 2, while Mr Dennis collected intelligence on the North Vietnam Army and travelled across South Vietnam working with different units.
To the older generation of veterans and all those who came before him, Mr Dennis only had one thing to say, “good on you mates”.
Keeping the ANZAC spirit alive was John, formerly a Petty Officer in the Australian Navy, who commemorated the day with a friend who had served in the New Zealand Navy.
“I enjoyed my service very much,” he said, smiling.
“Luckily I got back safe and sound, a lot of poor devils never did.”
John served aboard the HMAS Anzac, Sydney, Melbourne and Parramatta and was deployed to Indonesia during the Indonesian-Malaysian conflict of 1963 and later was redirected to the South China Sea and Gulf of Tonkin where he took part in the Vietnam war.
John’s father had been one of the first Anzac’s having fought in the Gallipoli campaign in World War One.
“Dad suffered a hell of a lot, that’s why I came today,” he said.
Many of John’s uncles never made it home and together with his Kiwi friend, they think about all the veterans who didn’t make it home and speak hopefully about the ones who still remain.
“I know it’s hard, but just keep going boys we’ll make it.”
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