Anzac Day!
Is it just me or did everyone love to see the huge turnout at Anzac Services across the coast yesterday…
The kids and I went to the cenotaph at Cotton Tree at 8.30…
The turn out was huge and I even learned something new…
I didn't make the dawn service yesterday, but I did learn where it came from…
The speaker at Cotton Tree told the story of the Reverend Arthur Ernest White of Albany, WA.
Reverend White was a padre of the earliest ANZACs to leave Australia with the First AIF in November 1914.
The convoy assembled at Albany’s King George Sound, Albany and at 4 am on the morning of their departure, he conducted a service for all men. Hitstory tells us most of those men never returned to Australian soil.
After the war, Reverend White gathered some 20 men at dawn on 25 April 1923 on Mt Clarence overlooking King George Sound and silently watched a wreath floating out to sea.
He then quietly recited the words ‘As the sun rises and goeth down we will remember them’.
Everyone was deeply moved.
Reverand White is quoted as saying at the time that ‘Albany was the last sight of land these ANZAC troops saw after leaving Australian shores and some of them never returned. We should hold a service here at the first light of dawn each ANZAC Day to commemorate them.’
And so it was…lest we forget.
Caroline Hutchinson
The kids and I went to the cenotaph at Cotton Tree at 8.30…
The turn out was huge and I even learned something new…
I didn't make the dawn service yesterday, but I did learn where it came from…
The speaker at Cotton Tree told the story of the Reverend Arthur Ernest White of Albany, WA.
Reverend White was a padre of the earliest ANZACs to leave Australia with the First AIF in November 1914.
The convoy assembled at Albany’s King George Sound, Albany and at 4 am on the morning of their departure, he conducted a service for all men. Hitstory tells us most of those men never returned to Australian soil.
After the war, Reverend White gathered some 20 men at dawn on 25 April 1923 on Mt Clarence overlooking King George Sound and silently watched a wreath floating out to sea.
He then quietly recited the words ‘As the sun rises and goeth down we will remember them’.
Everyone was deeply moved.
Reverand White is quoted as saying at the time that ‘Albany was the last sight of land these ANZAC troops saw after leaving Australian shores and some of them never returned. We should hold a service here at the first light of dawn each ANZAC Day to commemorate them.’
And so it was…lest we forget.
Caroline Hutchinson
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