WHEN the Bathurst community gathers in the pre-dawn dark for this morning’s dawn service, their thoughts will go back to the morning of April 25, 1915.
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They will be transported to a cold beach in a land faraway, where hundreds of young Australians slowly, quietly, rowed to their destiny.
They will try to imagine the terrible scene those young men faced as Turkish gunfire erupted from the hills above the beach, first a dull crack in the distance and then, as they rowed closer,
deafening shots that filled their ears and ignited the milky pre-dawn morning.
And they will know that they can never truly appreciate the sacrifice of those young men, nor the horrors of the Gallipoli campaign.
Later, when the Bathurst community gathers again for the region’s main Anzac Day service, young children will march beside elderly veterans and young servicemen and women who are now in their prime, watched on by a solemn crowd lining Rankin and Russell streets 10-deep in parts.
Then we fill every spare plot of land around the base of the Carillon to remember wars past and present, and give thanks for all who have served.
We will honour the sacrifice of those who died on foreign lands to keep war from our doorstep, and applaud those who continue to put up their hand to serve.
If Australia’s spirit was forged on the beaches of Gallipoli, then it is renewed every year at services just like these.
It is what makes us great.
Lest we forget.