ANZAC Day, 25th April, is the most important date in Australia's calendar. Across the length and breadth of Australia her people turn out to salute, honour and pay their respects to the fallen and to the surviving servicemen who willingly offered their lives to the service of their country.

If you should ever travel across Australia you will pass through a myriad of regional towns, cities and suburbs that at the time of the Great War were merely small villages of perhaps only a few thousand people or less. A conspicuous feature of all these typically Australian settlements is the local Cenotaph. Dedicated to the men who gave their lives in the Great War For Civilization. Upon these monuments the names of the fallen are inscribed. Most bear too many names for such small towns and districts and there was barely a family or person in Australia whom, by war's end in November 1918 were not affected. The lists of names are often tragic for in many small towns and districts multiple inscriptions of the same name appear on the same monument, only the initials are different - The term ANZAC embodies the true spirit of our nation.

    The (acronyn) name ANZAC became famous with the landing of the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the Dardanelles, Turkey, on 25 April 1915. It has since become synonymous with the determination and spirit of our armed forces. The significance of the day, and the acronym, in Australia’s heritage is probably best stated by Dr. C. W. Bean in the following excerpt from his official Australian history of World War One:

     "It was not merely that 7600 Australians and nearly 2500 New Zealanders had been killed or mortally wounded there, and 24,000 more (19,000 Australians and 5,000 New Zealanders) had been wounded, while fewer than 100 were prisoners. But the standards set by the first companies at the first call - by the stretcher-bearers, the medical officers, the staff, the company leaders, the privates, the defaulters on the water barges, the Light Horse at The Nek - this was already part of the tradition not only of ANZAC but of the Australian and New Zealand peoples.

    By dawn on 20 December, ANZAC had faded into a dim blue line lost amid other hills on the horizon as the ships took their human freight to Imbros, Lemnos and Egypt. But ANZAC stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance that will never own defeat".

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