2022, Pinegrove Memorial
Veterans, serving personnel, Rooty Hill Sub Branch members, Mayor Tony Bleasdale, distinguished guests and everyone joining us either at Pinegrove or online this morning.
We gather to respect and remember those who served our country.
But today we cannot fail to note this moment.
With all that today means, as committed as we have been to make our way here before dawn every year, and for many years before that:
for the last three years, events prevented us from this simple but personal act of commemoration.
An act that remembers the huge burden; so many fellow Australians losing lives.
Ours being part of the worldwide 40 million estimated military and civilian casualties of World War I.
Our annual moment to remember and respect, denied its usual form by virtue of something that challenged the way of life for our generation:
a global pandemic that affected 500 million and took over 6 million lives.
It seems difficult to believe that the last time this place was full for an ANZAC service was 2019.
Yet we emerge, three years later, determined as ever to mark this moment as we have before.
Joined as a community because of the commitment of our own veterans, in the form of the Rooty Hill Sub Branch
an effort for which our community expresses a genuinely heartfelt appreciation.
The stories that make up the birth of ANZAC continue to touch us across the years.
Of the five million people that called Australia home during the First World War, 420,000 put their hand up to serve.
Back then ours was a small rural community, however almost 900 volunteers from the Blacktown area responded to the call.
Among them the Locks — a Darug family, with members from the Blacktown and Windsor region.
More than 20 members of the Locks were known to have fought in what was called the Great War.
Defying rules of the day intended to prevent First Australians from enlisting, the Locks were there at Gallipoli, the Somme and in Egypt and Palestine.[1
They were among many families whose personal histories — and then their futures — uncommonly shaped by the impacts of the Great War, stories such as these: emblematic.
In many ways our lives, our world would be unrecognisable to the Locks, and all others that left our infant, emerging community to serve.
Yet the deeds of these men and their comrades that are the foundation of this day continue to move us.
Though the day was borne of the Great War, we also meet to mark the actions of so many that have come after.
Here, in this cold dawn that touches us all, during that approaching silent moment, in the mind of every person gathered now:
we might walk in the shoes of others, to spare a moment to think of what they went through, what their sacrifice meant.
The span of a century may make us uncertain of our immediate connection, but we are sure, definite, more certain of our gratitude and our respect.
We remember those generations of Australians who didn’t have the chance to grow old back home. We thank them.
We remember our brothers and sisters from New Zealand, who joined with our own to form the backbone of a tradition born at ANZAC Cove. We thank them.
We remember the nurses, doctors and all those who tended to the injured or who might have held those taking their last moments. We thank them.
We remember that foes at that one point in time, at those places with names like Gallipoli that sit so deep in our nation’s memory, once remarked:
“There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
So much has changed in the more than a century that has passed since that conflict.
And yet, we still feel a chill from conflicts taking place in other parts of the world today.
People there, willing to stand, defying odds and risk, to protect livelihoods.
We see it in them.
We recognise it in our own.
We are thankful for those who serve our nation today.
Perhaps in a conflict beyond here.
Or perhaps through the course of a bushfire or a pandemic or a flood. The ADF, there to serve and to save.
We gather for those that stepped forward for this nation;
because their stories continue to tell us so much, to teach us so much.
We are here because, no matter what: we continue to be grateful. We respect.
Since Gallipoli. Today. Always.
We will remember them.
Lest we forget.
