Dave and Lynne in New Zealand: Anzac Day

Yesterday was Anzac Day, sort of like a cross between Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, but celebrated more enthusiastically than either of those days are celebrated in the U.S. On April 25, 1915, the British Royal Navy dropped the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps on a beach near Gallipoli, Turkey. (Turkey was a key ally to Germany in WWI and Churchill, then the head of the British Admiralty thought that Turkey would be a back door into Germany.) The location where they were dropped was a mistake by the British Navy, and many soldiers were killed right on the beach. In 1921, the Returned Soldiers Association in New Zealand successfully lobbied for April 25 to be observed as a day of memory for soldiers in WWI who died. After WWII, Anzac Day continued to be a day to mourn fallen soldiers.

Today there's a huge interest in observing the day. In an amazingly secular country, it seems to have become a way to remember that there are spiritual realities to life. On Friday, the day before Anzac Day, all the ceremonies around the province of Otago were listed in the newspaper, and there were many. In Dunedin, a parade marched before sunrise (6:15!) from the center of town to the WWI monument in a park, where a ceremony was held. Dave got up early and attended the ceremony, which resembled a typical worship service with Christian prayers, scripture readings and songs. He estimates that 4,000 people were there. [Note from two days later: the newspaper says there were 9,000 people there!] After the ceremony, people put wreaths and poppies on the monument. Later there would be a service at the soldiers graves at the military cemetery and then a service at the Anglican cathedral.

That evening we went to the beach at St. Clair, Dunedin's urban beach, to get a little ocean therapy. In the first photo, that's White Island offshore.

Near the beach is a coffee house that always makes us a bit sentimental. When our son Mike came to Dunedin to write his masters thesis in December 2007 and January 2008, he rode Dave's bicycle to this cafe every day to work on his thesis on his laptop.