By John Wells
Dandenong Cranbourne RSL president
The Anzacs are still here.
The centenary of the landings at Gallipoli is a great opportunity for us all to think about who we are and about how we became the people we are.
It is an invitation to think about the past, the present and the future, as one.
It was a bitter defeat, of course, wasting the lives of more than 15,000 of Australia’s best, and starting a reaction in Australia that eventually led to great difficulty in finding sufficient volunteers to fill the gaps on the Western front.
The long casualty lists and the letters home made it clear the war was not, after all, a great adventure.
It was supposed to be ‘over by Christmas’, but it lasted four Christmasses and for many of them there were to be no more Christmasses.
Yet we celebrate it proudly, and so we should.
I don’t think it was the ‘birth of our nation’ at all, but I do think it was proof of the sort of nation we had become.
I think we can still be hugely proud that so many people put up their hands when the need was there.
I think we can be hugely proud of the way we fought, and the things we did.
I think part of that pride is that, simply, they were us. The Anzacs are still here.
The people who fought in the Second World War, all over the globe, the people who have fought since, all over the globe, were, and are, Anzacs in a very real sense.
I have said before that we have the best gene pool in the world because this huge island has always attracted the ‘have a go’ people, the people who were prepared to move to a new land, a new culture, often a new language.
The people who had the courage to do something about their circumstances.
The people who were prepared to sacrifice almost everything to give their children a better life, a better world.
From the First Fleet, through explorations, the gold rushes, the settling, all the building of a nation, we had people who would have a go, people who would put their hands up when the need was there.
We still have them.
The Anzacs are still here.
We are still a land of volunteers. We are still a land of people who will ‘have a go’.
That is the essential memorial to those diggers on the heights, those diggers in the mud and in the deserts, those diggers in the jungles, those airmen in the vastness of the skies, those sailors on the endless seas, those nurses in stinking tent hospitals.
Let’s celebrate the centenary by remembering not just what they did but who they were.
They were the sons and daughters of a tough, proud people, made up of the world’s very best.
They built a nation, and they fought for it.
Let’s celebrate the centenary by committing ourselves all over again to those values that drove the Anzacs. That is the memorial that matters. Let’s honour them by having the past shape the future, by remembering who we are, all of us, together.
Let’s remember that we have a duty to the people in our past, the people who put us here and gave us the Lucky Country.
We all owe them a debt, but it is one we pay to our children and their futures, not to the past.
On Anzac Day, wear the badge. Wear it as a symbol of so much that is great and good.
Wear it in memory of the Anzacs, and wear it knowing that they will never really be gone from us.
The Anzacs are still here.
