It was raining when we got up this morning but I still wandered down to the local cenotaph for the Anzac Service at 11 o'clock. The weather didn't deter anyone and the usual crowd gathered around to pay their respects. The Guest Speaker this year was an old gentleman who came to the district in 1949, so has a good claim to be a local. He talked about his father and uncle who served in the army and other local identities who had been in the forces. As he mentioned the names, we realised that the same names appeared on the cenotaph, commemorating members of those same families who hadn't returned.
Other members of those families still live in the area, so the ghosts of those diggers are never far away.
On this day last year, Marilyn and I were on the Dawn Princess anchored in Milne Bay and taking part in another Anzac Service, which we shared with a couple of thousand other passengers and several hundred ex-servicemen and women. I've attached a photo we had taken on that cruise with a couple from Brisbane we met. He was ex-navy and did his service in Vietnam.
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