ANZAC Day!

Today was ANZAC Day. ANZAC day is a national day of rememberance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honor members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during WWI. It now more broadly commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. Anzac Day is also observed in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, and Tonga.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning in order to catch the bus at 5:00am that took Nickey, Gavin, Suzie, and I to Kings Park, where the dawn service was held. The memorial service we a bit chilly (18 C, 50F). I knew it was going to get hot later on in the day so I didn't quite dress appropriately. We arrived at the service at 5:45am. We were pretty far in the back so we watched the big screen tvs. I found out later on during the evening news that there were 30,000 people who attended the dawn service this morning. It was total silence the entire time while people laid flowers in remembrance of their loved ones for 20 minutes and then a speech about ANZAC day and the importance of it and what it means. Here is what we saw when we arrived.

The screen did show Andrew standing at one of the corners of the monument so I got a picture of that.

I felt bad because I work a tank, long sleeves, and my fleece and was chill and cuddling up to nickey and gavin the whole time. The army guys on post wore pants and a short sleeve button up. I bet they were freezing

At the end of the service we saw Andrew walk past. We yelled and waved and got a quick picture before he took off. He is a bit tired. He had to get up at 3:30am and then freeze all morning long.

We then had 2 hours before the parade started. So we stood in line for hot chocolate. I paid $4.20 for what we would consider a small coffee (they called it regular) and when they gave it to us it was warm milk. We had to go get a spoon and stir the chocolate at the bottom. It was luke warm, not hot. We were half way through and it was cold chocolate.

We headed down to the parade route. On our way we discovered a GIANT tree at the bottom of the hill where the park is.

It was pretty cool. The post office people walked around and passed out mini flags for everyone to wave. We steaked out a spot for the parade and ate out packed breakfasts that we packed the night before.

Here is the beginning of the parade!

The parade was all military personnel. It was the band of the branch followed by all of the active members of that branch in the order of Navy, Army, Air force. (They do not have marines)

Navy

We were able to find Andrew and we yelled his name really loud and he broke face and smiled. Starting with the tall guy in the front Andrew is 4th back. In the second picture he is the second one up from the bottom.

Here is Air Force.

After the active military, came all of the retired veterans also the older ladies who served as nurses and all of the cadets who are at the military schools march too.

Retired Veterans:

At the end of the parade was a bunch of different nationalities that fought with the Aussies and Kiwis. Let me know if you recognize these people:

Even though the banner is folded over these are the American and Canadian veterans. There were also veterans from South Africa, Greece, Vietnam, Korea, Rhodesia, and Turkey.

The parade was 1.5 hours. We then took the train home. Where we ate lunch, showered, and napped. Woke up, ate dinner, and lounged around for what was left of the day. Here is one of the many short videos my roommate Nickey took at the parade. Her camera died so I let her use mine. She took 186 pictures and about 5-6 short videos.