Full list of Anzac Day Dawn Services in Victoria 2025

Hundreds of commemorative events will mark Anzac Day across Victoria in 2025. Find out when and where your local service is.

See where your nearest Dawn Service will be observed on Anzac Day.

Hundreds of commemorative events will mark Anzac Day across Victoria in 2025, with thousands of people expected to set their alarms for Dawn Services throughout the state.

Victorian RSL branches will host more than 600 events to share the country’s history of service, educate the next generation and connect veterans and their families with communities.

RSL Victoria president Robert Webster said the organisation’s commemorative activities were at the core of what it stood for.

Dr Robert Webster, State President of the RSL, at the Shrine of Remembrance War Memorial. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Brendan Beckett

“It is our mission that every Victorian veteran and their families are respected and supported,” he said.

“RSL Victoria would never walk away from either these commemorations or the important role we play in educating future generations about service and sacrifice.

“However, our commemorative activities are a substantial financial burden for the RSL in Victoria, and in addition to the significant cost, they require the efforts of thousands of volunteers.”

This year the RSL asked the community to get involved with Anzac Day and if possible support the Lone Pine Appeal which helped deliver events across the state.

“We are appealing to the community to help keep the solemn promise of ‘Lest We Forget’ alive and well into the future,” Dr Webster said.

Poppies highlight PTSD

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, but in a small western Victorian town they are meticulously hand-crafted out of bullets recovered from Europe’s most historic battlefields.

From a workshop at the back of his Beaufort home, artist Ron Davis works day and night to honour Australia’s returned and fallen service men and women, as well as the thousands of Victorian frontline workers who battle PTSD.

Using artistic skills from his background as a lead roofer, Mr Davis makes poppies out of .303 lead bullets collected from battlegrounds and army training facilities across the world.

Beaufort artist Ron Davis in his workshop holding poppies he made from bullets.

Many of the poppies are made out of bullets picked out of the Passchendaele battlefield in Ypres, Belgium which were given to him by Western Australian media tycoon Kerry Stokes.

Others are made from bullets collected from the Kyneton historical range and the Ballarat police academy which are then presented to returned soldiers — an exchange which Mr Davis says is “always emotional”.

“I lived in Kyneton and would walk across the road where there was this forest and I would find really old .303 bullets and I would collect them over a few years and then thought I would raise some money for the local RSL by making a poppy and painting it red,” he said.

Mr Davis's backyard workshop.

“After I made them that one and presented it I got 300 orders and raised $10,000 which I distributed to various RSLs and with it came so many emotional stories about grandfathers or uncles that served in Afghanistan or in the First and Second World Wars.

“They’ve been presented to veterans who’ve fought in the Battle of Long Tan and Iraq and it’s quite something presenting it to returned soldiers.

“Their reaction is so beautiful because it really touches the soldiers.”

Despite demand for his poppies increasing ahead of commemorative days like ANZAC and Remembrance Days, Mr Davis said they represented the daily mental struggles soldiers face upon their return.

Poppies made from bullets made by Beaufort artist Ron Davis.

“The poppies aren’t necessarily about Anzac Day or Remembrance Day but about how people are returning from war every day and are going through that inner battle,” he said.

“I get so many calls from retired police officers and veterans that come across the poppies and really touch their hearts and then they open up about their experiences.

“When you hear what returned soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan say about seeing their mates blown up, to be able to do this for them to me is really special.”

Mr Davis also makes blue poppies — called Battlefield Blue — which symbolise the mental struggles faced by Victoria’s frontline emergency workers.

Mr Davis in his backyard.

In April 2020 Mr Davis presented four blue poppies to Police Legacy to commemorate the four police officers who were killed in a truck crash on the Eastern Freeway.

He was also the brains behind the blue poppy badges which are sold at police stations across the state.

“Police and first responders deal with so much trauma and PTSD,” Mr Davis said.

“They go to all of these road traffic incidents and when you hear their stories it really breaks your heart.”

His Poppies have also been presented to the Australian War Memorial, Victoria Police, Beyond Blue and donated to various charities across the country, with proceeds going to local RSLs.