Avoca Races, Anzac Day 2014

This year’s Anzac Day meeting coincided with the 99th anniversary of the disastrous invasion at Gallipoli.  For many years it was a solemn day, a day of reflection, to remember those who’d fallen. It is now becoming more a celebration, a day to get pissed and act in a jingoistic manner. Five of my mother’s uncles served in the First AIF, one did not return, the others all came back injured in various ways. It is important to remember Anzac Day, remember the sacrifices, but do it in a informed manner where we learn a balanced history of the event(s), not the jingoistic razzamataz which has come to the forefront in the last quarter of a century. It is too important day not to be understood and remembered in an informed, mature manner.

Any how enough of my soap box, off to Avoca for the races.

Comments

  1. Coming from a family that has the extraordinary luck of not being touched directly by war (brother too young for Vietnam, father too young for WW2, grandfather too young for WW1 and training military horses at Caulfield during WW2), I perhaps have no qualifications to speak about Anzac Day. Still, I think your point is very well made, Glen. In years to come kids might think, ‘Oh, Anzac Day, that’s when there’s a big footy match’. As for a balanced history and being better informed, in Eureka Street today Ray Cassin notes that when Australia won the America’s Cup in 1983 Alan Bond apparently said something like “This is Australia’s biggest victory since Gallipoli.”

  2. agree Glen…”I’m a bigger patriot than you” will become a bigger game next year.

    and, forget the landing itself, i heard it said that this was significant as the 99th commemoration of Gallipoli! (sorry McCarthy!)

Leave a Comment

*