Redcliffe RSL sub-branch has formed a plan to ensure Anzac Day is no forgotten on the Peninsula
A RSL sub-branch north of Brisbane has come up with a plan to ensure the thousands of people who usually gather for its service will still be able to pay their respects to our Anzac heroes.
Moreton
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TENS of thousands won’t be able to gather at Redcliffe’s Anzac Place on April 25 but the RSL sub-branch has come up with a new plan to ensure our Anzac heroes are not forgotten.
More than 30,000 people attend the dawn and midmorning march and service at Redcliffe each year.
Redcliffe RSL sub-branch vice president Cheryl Barrett starts planning the event the November before.
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The Redcliffe services, along with all others in Queensland, have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
But the Redcliffe RSL sub-branch president Neville Cullen has come up with a way to ensure residents can still pay their respects to all past and current servicemen and women.
They plan to conduct an on-air dawn service via local radio station 99.7FM.
“I am really pleased we can do this, it has given me a new lease on life,” Mrs Barrett, who will MC the service, said.
It will be live from 5.30am.
Mrs Barrett said some parts of the service would be prerecorded but that the rest of the service would be as true to the normal program as possible.
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“We have prerecorded the national anthems and hymns,” Mrs Barrett said.
“It will be very much the same, just without the physical things such as wreath laying, and the catafalque party.”
Mrs Barrett said popular poet Rupert McCall had even recorded a poem to include as part of the service.
“It is a beautiful poem, written about Anzac Day,” she said.
The theme for this year’s service will be nurses.
“2020 is the year of the nurse so we will be concentrating on the role they played,” Mrs Barrett said.
She said it was the first time they had done a service like this. Mrs Barrett was grateful the radio station was happy to come on board with the idea.
Another way to commemorate the day has been shared hundreds of times on Peninsula and Moreton Bay social media pages.
It suggests that residents stand on the end of their driveway with a candle at 5.55am and hold a minute’s silence.
Mrs Barrett said it was a wonderful idea and that the on-air service would finish in time to allow people to do just that.
“It is great that people haven’t forgotten them,” she said.
The on-air dawn service will be broadcast on 99.7FM from 5.30am on April 25.
All plans are subject to change based on advice from the relevant authorities.