New beginning to an old tradition

“Not forgotten nor forsaken are the lads no longer here; I shall call — and you will waken on this one day of the year.” — John Sandes, Landing in the Dawn

TRADITIONS play a regular part in our household. Some have been passed down. Others have been adapted and made our own.

We open our Christmas presents and hunt for Easter eggs in specific ways. There is anything-you-want-to-eat-fortea-on-the-last-day-of-term — even when you have long finished going to school.

It is something to become involved at the start of a tradition. In on the ground floor. Not waiting before jumping on the bandwagon.

It is not often I can be said to be an early adopter. But this Anzac Day I was.

I was among those who made the journey to Leopold for its first ever Anzac Day service at its spanking new memorial.

I’ve been to a few such services — at dawn and later — and always found them to be mov- ing, a mix of pride and sadness and reverence. But they have also been at sites — like Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance — imbued with their own sense of tradition and history; Leopold’s war memorial had been completed only days before. Its traditions had not yet been written. So I wanted to see if you could transplant a sense of occasion into something that not so long ago had been a construction site. I found the answer to be a resounding yes. Over sodden ground and under leaden skies we came in our hundreds. There were those who started life between two world wars and those not yet old enough to know a world in the grip of global conflict.

Some walked or drove from their nearby homes, others drove back to the place they’d called home for so long. All knew this was the place they wanted to be on this day at this time.

In many respects, the service was a mirror of every other service taking place on the morning of April 25. There were speeches and wreaths and the mournful sounds of The Last Post.

But — and it may have been a trick of my hearing — at one stage I would swear the service was punctuated by the sound of distant gunfire.

That is how I will remember the start of what I hope will be my newest tradition.