It was 1916, a year after a “baptism of fire” endured on a distant beach, that April 25 was embraced as Anzac Day.
Only twice over more than a century since has the anniversary and its traditions that have weaved their way into Australian hearts and culture, been seriously interrupted.
In the wake of the bombing of Darwin on February 19, 1942, killing almost 250, there arose fears of crowds becoming targets for strafing enemy aircraft during the WWII “Battle for Australia”.
Accordingly, large-scale marches were banned – including the planned inaugural event for the new War Memorial in Canberra. Official ceremonies extended to simple Dawn Services (the first formal occasion of which was 1928, although its origins are debated), the laying of wreaths, and church memorials.
While a national public holiday from 1927 (after much debate), “preoccupied with the enemy at the gate” the Curtin Government “considered it imperative that work in industries essential to the war effort should be continued on that day”.
The other major disruption to Anzac commemorations occurred in 1919 - when the world was in the grip of something similar to what we're experiencing 101 years later.
The guns had ceased firing just five months before. Survivors of the more than 416,000 Aussies who signed up (some 62,000 dead, 150,000 wounded or maimed) were returning to hometowns buckling under the weight of the consequences of war. Further burdened by an influenza pandemic killing millions more globally, at least 15,000 of whom would be their own compatriots.
The disease officially breached Australian precautions in late January (it was more likely the end of 1918). With large gatherings prohibited, Sydney “postponed” its heretofore heavily attended Anzac Parade. Instead, an "unobtrusively quiet" service of the "simplest character" was held in the open, central space of the Domain overlooking Woolloomooloo Bay. While masks and standing three feet apart were stipulated, few are shown abiding by the rules.
For another service at the grand clifftop cemetery at Waverely, with its manifold significant interments including Henry Lawson, it was advertised that "masks must be worn". However, at a similar event for as many as 1,300 soldiers and staff at the Randwick Hospital, precautions were seemingly eschewed. This, despite the fact that Australia's official "Patient Zero" and the subsequent first identified cases had only occurred at the facility two months earlier.
The restaged Sydney march took place a month later, on May 22. While the weather had been dismal in the lead-up, the day dawned bright and clear. Arrangements had by necessity been changed and all of this no doubt contributed to it not being the size of the Anzac Parades that had previously occurred. Nonetheless "great numbers of people were about to cheer the soldiers and sailors".
Giving an idea of the undertow of uncertainty and lack of cohesive decision-making during this period, restrictions were implemented, removed, and re-implemented every time infections and deaths rose or fell. Measures were also not universally administered, primarily a result of the states being unable to reach agreement.
Melbourne replaced what was previously “one of the most spectacular processions ever witnessed” in the city with a “military review”, moved to May 3 and the MCG (they would remain intermittent in the Victorian capital until 1925). Although heading towards 2,000 in the emergency flu hospital set up in the Royal Exhibition Building and while “public meetings of 20 or more people” were supposedly not permitted, attendees were plentiful with nary a face-covering to be seen.
The day after, 25 new deaths were reported and another 90 cases. Within a week the press would note “Melbourne is still battling with the influenza scourge”.
In the other capitals, curtailed street processions, Town Hall meetings and dinners proceeded, although note was made “they were celebrating under very different conditions”, in light of both the Armistice signalling peace and the impositions of “pneumonienza”.
At the beginning of April, the Adelaide Advertiser had made its position known: “The outbreak is serious, but by no means alarming. In any case it is absurd that the activities of the Commonwealth should be grievously interfered with because sickness is more prevalent than at normal times”.
Brisbane would hold a second commemoration come mid-July - as it turned out, the peak of the pandemic in Australia.
Throughout particularly afflicted NSW, “fitting celebrations” were delayed or “of a subdued order on account of the Influenza restrictions”. This included the region surrounding the barely established national capital.
Three years earlier: “In common with every part of the vast British Dominions, Queanbeyan fittingly commemorated the first anniversary of the landing of the Australian troops at Gallipoli”.
At a multi-denominational assembly at the Anglican Christ Church (1860) on the river, special prayers were read, the Town Band played Rudyard Kipling's “Recessional” (“Lest we forget-lest we forget!”) and the National Anthem (yes, it was God Save the King). The Last Post sounded.
"Altogether, the service was a splendid tribute to the fallen heroes" - as much a call to arms for the young men of the community as a commemoration of those who had gone before them.
On “Gallipoli Day”, 1919, the town's “memorial service” in the Triumph Hall where so many Queanbeyan boys had been farewelled, earned only a single paragraph in the local press.
Elsewhere around the region, the situation varied.
Goulburn had suffered the loss of its first official victims of the flu – a young mother and her newborn daughter - on April 17. On April 24, the second, 29-year-old Oswald Slatyer, succumbed (42 residents would lose their lives to it, including Health Inspector J.R. Biddle). The Goulburn Evening Penny Post would report that "The celebration of Anzac Day this year showed a marked contrast to last year's celebration ... due to the influenza outbreak and the consequent public safety restrictions". The city marked the day with a memorial service, a smaller procession - sans band - and only "a few words" from the dignitaries.
In Cowra, a planned inaugural ball "to commemorate the glorious landing of Australia's intrepid sons on the shores of Gallipoli" was rescheduled for June 25. It went ahead, but spirits were apparently greatly dampened for "the lull in the malignant intensity of the plague which has stricken this State, in common with practically the rest of the world, was but temporary, and once more the grim reaper got busy".
And so, on April 25, 2020, we also won't commemorate in our usual manner those who served, who died, and who continue to serve and protect.
There'll be no public assembling to watch dawn break as it did when thousands of the 1st Australian Imperial Force, New Zealanders by their side, charged the sandhills of an ancient foreign nation.
Equally, no marches down main streets of country towns and cities alike. Veterans and defence force personnel won't “fall in” to the fanfare of bands and cheering crowds.
Small children will miss the opportunity to be proudly adorned with ribboned medallions presented to their forebears for feats and bravery they can scarce imagine.
Communal thanksgiving won't occur at local places of worship. Nor the converging on pubs to throw a couple of old coins in the air to raucous calls of “come in spinner”, fists full of dollars vying for the attention of the “ringkeeper” - or “boxer” - managing unruly “schools”.
And Eternal Flames will continue to flicker as unheralded as they are on most other days.
However, this doesn't mean we won't and can't remember and honour those who are rightly deserving: it will just be a quieter affair, perhaps even offering the chance for more contemplative, personal reflection on what we refer to as “the Anzac spirit”.
In 1928, the year before the world would be plunged headlong into yet more catastrophe with the onset of the Great Depression, Rev. Charles Wearne, a stretcher bearer between 1915 and 1918 and Queanbeyan RSL sub-branch President, gave a moving address. He pointed out that “it is difficult to interpret that spirit rightly”.
“To those of us who were there; to those of us who had some friend smashed to pieces by our side; to those of us who saw those fields of little white crosses and tried to count them and grew weary in the task; to fond mothers sitting lonesome, wrapped in the veil of memory; to silent fathers whose grief will not bear discussion - to all such, I say, Anzac Day is more than an anniversary, a holiday, a day for parades and sermons and lectures … it is the day that Australians by their daring have made immortal.”
For Rev. Wearne, the “spirit of Anzac” was “a fellowship of service”.
“Think of it … think when the sheer loneliness of life grips you, when days drag, when funds run low - think of the sacrifice your sons made on Anzac's awful shore, and learn to say: ' It was for me' “.
As they did then, so now in 2020, can we.
Lest we forget.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES:
* Origins of Anzac Day Commemorations by Kerry Neale, Gallipoli 100, 2015, pp. 244-245.
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