IT'S a shame that there should be a need to remind people to be respectful of Anzac Day, but the greater shame would be recognising that need and then doing nothing about it.
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It's hard to imagine anyone being openly disrespectful at a solemn dawn service when the Last Post is ringing out in the darkness.
It's hard to imagine anyone being openly disrespectful as The Ode is being intoned.
But forgetting about the meaning of the day - treating it as a chance to drink too much and then run amok once the commemorations are over - is its own form of disrespect, whether that was the intention of the individual or not.
History isn't static and every April 25 commemoration in Australia isn't exactly the same.
There have been periods in Australia's history when it has looked as if Anzac Day was losing the nation's attention and there have been periods when a new generation has become energised by the Anzac story and crowds at the services have started to swell again.
There have also been periods when Anzac Day has for some (not all) been associated more with the party afterwards than the solemnity before.
COVID has caused us plenty of heartache over the past two years but one of its few constructive contributions in Bathurst was the Anzac Day of 2020.
That year, when locals gathered with a candle in the dark at the end of driveways to reflect on sacrifice and service, was perhaps as pure an expression of Anzac Day as the city will ever experience.
There wasn't the communion of the enormous crowd that gathers at Kings Parade for the traditional mid-morning service, but there was a communion of another sort as lights twinkled here, there and everywhere in the city's streets.
We're able to get together once more for Anzac Day in 2022 and that's a good thing.
But we should remember to give the day the respect that it deserves and not lose sight of why it is we pause on April 25.
We're Australians, and Australians will always love a drink and a punt and a chance to get together with their mates.
But as the Bathurst RSL Club has been at pains to emphasise in recent years, we can do all that without losing a sense of what the day is really about.
If we ever lose the real essence of Anzac Day, then we lose something important of ourselves.
