Andrew Rule: We may be apart, but we’re still united this Anzac Day
As tens of thousands of quiet Australians lit their own flames of remembrance in the pre-dawn gloom, there was one thing for sure; this was a unique Anzac Day. And while we stood apart, we still stood together as a nation for our heroes, writes Andrew Rule.
Andrew Rule
Don't miss out on the headlines from Andrew Rule. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It’s Anzac morning, well before dawn proper, and Audrey Taylor has just a few butterflies to deal with before she faces the music.
The mournful sound of the bagpipes drift from the television into the dark street as Audrey strokes the keys on the soprano cornet borrowed from her school band. A cornet, if you’re wondering, is a trumpet’s first cousin.
Outside, her parents Colin and Anna and her little brother Ned are waiting. On the front door is a wreath the kids made with cardboard “poppies” fashioned from modified egg cartons and red paint. It looks a treat.
Anna Taylor wears a poppy and Colin holds a candle in a jar. So do three young people next door. Another candle flickers at the front gate of another place four houses down.
This is Stawell St, Richmond, but it could have been anywhere in the nation during this Do It Yourself Dawn Service, as tens of thousands of quiet Australians lit their own flames of remembrance in the pre-dawn gloom.
Dead on 6am, as the polished official renditions of the Last Post ring out across the land, Audrey Taylor steps up. She stands in front of the stand her mum set up earlier with the sheet music pegged on under a tiny light.
Audrey is a serious child, at eight (“and a half”) years old she’s a big sister used to responsibility. She has practised for this but only for the few days since the idea took hold. She has played the cornet for just over a year at Richmond West Primary, which has a brass band.
She puts the cornet to her lips, puffs her cheeks, frowns with concentration and the instrument sputters to life. The performance is perfectly imperfect, a small thing of great beauty.
As the last wobbly notes die away, there’s nothing but the most Australian sound of all: magpies carolling as the first smudge of light sneaks over the eastern horizon.
After holding the silence, Ned cuddles his sister, eyes wide and face solemn. He senses the gravity of the occasion, the mix of pride and sombreness.
As darkness fades, the streetscape takes shape. The Taylors’ house is one of a row double-fronted weatherboards with tin roofs, front verandas and picket fences, about as typically Australian as a house gets.
It turns out they were built in 1915, the year the first Anzacs stormed Gallipoli and launched a legend. They have seen every Anzac Day for 105 years.
Wallace McGillivray has seen most of them, too. The World War II veteran is 96 but age has not yet wearied him. He can still honour fallen mates.
Before dawn, he stood in the driveway entrance of his Ashwood home with his wife Lorna, his daughters Heather and Judy and a group of neighbours. Mr McGillivray served in Papua New Guinea and Morotai.
He was 16 when he joined. There were 60 men in his unit. Now there are only two left, as the last world war veterans vanish.
He honoured absent friends by dressing as if he were going to march with them, medals pinned to his dark suit, standing straight as the ode was read. He and his wife recited “Lest We Forget”.
With him in spirit was Jack Hair, another veteran fit enough to stand to for the dawn service. Mr Hair stood outside his Langwarrin unit for the Last Post. He left the talking to his grandson Dean Worton.
“Grandad was very quiet,” he said. “He lost his brother in the war and so he was thinking of them and remembering his mates.”
Last year Robert Jeavons, now 94, was one of three world war veterans to lead the Anzac march. On Anzac morning, he and his daughter Anne stood in his Brighton Beach driveway to mark the occasion.
“It was quite stirring to participate in,” Mr Jeavons said later. “One has a feeling of loneliness but not for long before the memories flooded back.
“Today was very different from previous years with us all under the curtain of this epidemic.”
And that was how it went on Anzac Day 2020, when Australians stayed apart but stood together.
Lest we forget.
VICTORIANS RISE TO HONOUR ANZAC DAY HEROES