I have always tried to take my girls to the dawn service for ANZAC Day as I have tried to attend for the last twenty years or so. I feel that a little understanding of the sacrifice that others have made for our current freedom and way of life is necessary for a proper perspective on life.
The girls started attending in prams at Kingscliff and Murwillumbah in Northern NSW where we lived in Australia before coming to Papua New Guinea but this was the first ANZAC day for us in a former battlefield site where there are war dead buried.
On ANZAC day last year I was in transit at
Lae has a large war cemetery that is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and is one of the calmest, relaxing and beautiful places in Lae. (There are also three K9 guard teams to keep ‘undesirable’ people out.) We often just visit on a weekend afternoon and just stroll around and look at the ages and wonder how they may have died. As there are so many troops that are not frontline troops I imagine diseases like malaria, typhoid, dysentery and others took their toll as well as the fighting or it could be bombing. One confronting aspect is the fact that there are only a handful of the hundreds of Indian soldiers buried here are actually named.
The dawn service was scheduled to begin at 5:30 am after arriving at 5 am. It was hard to wake the girls but they were also excited by the candles handed out to everyone when they arrived.
The plastic cups started burning after about half an hour as the candles reached the edges of the cups.
The service was attended by around 150 people and wreaths were presented from the 
It was a moving ceremony with the usual poems and also reflections made of battlefields in 
Unfortunately as we were about to sing the national anthems of the three respective countries there was a power blackout and the PA failed.
The service finished with the sun rising from over the houses and lighting the forest and cross from the darkness as the last of the candles ran down.
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