More than 500 people gathered around the cenotaph in Kempsey this morning to show their respect to our country’s current and former servicemen and women.
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In delivering the commemorative address, Member for Oxley, Melinda Pavey, said Australians have so much to be proud of and be grateful for.
Mrs Pavey acknowleded the many children in attendance, who are the future of this great country and will inherit our traditions and ensure the ANZAC spirit lives for eternity.
She then commented on how Australians choose to commemorate ANZAC Day on the anniversary of our greatest ever military disaster and what this says about us as a people.
“To see what it was like for those troops as they got off the boats ill-prepared, ill-trained, and poorly commanded – 2000 young Australian and New Zealand troops dies on that day to give us what we have today,” she said.
“But isn’t it the Australian way that the most famous story that we all know about is a loss- the defeat at Galippoli.
“The irony is 100 years ago today, our Aussie troops on the Western Front, so much better trained, equipped, and commanded were able to turn the course of modern history by being part of the battle that assured the allies won World War I at Villers Bretonneux in France.
“That battle took place over two days and the irony of it being three years to the day of Galippoli is just extraordinary.”
Kempsey Macleay RSL Sub-branch president Terry Hunt told the crowd ANZAC Day is a time to remember those, who, in the great tragedy of war, gave their lives for Australia and the freedom of mankind.
"Those who still sleep amid the ridges of Gallipoli and the terraced hills of Palestine; in lovely cemeteries of France and Belgium or the shimmering haze of the Libyan desert, amid the mountains and olive groves of Greece and the Middle East, and the jungles of Malaya, Papau New Guinea, Vietnam and the Pacific Islands, and rugged Korea, Afghanistan, Jerusalem, Timor-Leste, Egypt, Solomon Islands, Iraq, Sudan, and Australian Border Protection amid loving friends in our Mother Country and our own land! And unknown resting places in every continent and every sea,” he said.
“We remember all who have since fallen by our side in all wars, in the air and on the sea and land, and all of our loyal friends among the people of Papua New Guinea and elsewhere.
“We think of every man, woman and child who, in those crucial years, died so that the lights of freedom and humanity might continue to shine.
“May we and our successors prove worthy of their sacrifice.”
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The Kempsey Service was one of many held across the Macleay today:
