Australians across the country gathered on 25 April to mark the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. At the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led national commemorations, calling on the country to protect the legacy of the ANZACs and ensure their stories are passed on to future generations.
Albanese’s words were deliberate, leaning into the moment. “Anzac Day asks us to stand against the erosion of time,” he said, echoing a theme of vigilance against forgetting. His message was less about ceremony and more about continuation—how each generation renews the flame, however fragile, passed down from one to the next.
That renewal began even before sunrise. On the eve of ANZAC Day, a different kind of silence had settled at the Sydney Opera House forecourt, where the Harbour Sunset Tribute unfolded. The event, marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War, brought together over 100 performers and veterans in a procession of drums, remembrance, and light. Among those in attendance were veterans Norma Booth, John McAuley, and Des Jones, standing beside Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
Dutton called it a moving tribute. “Just as the ANZAC spirit shaped our national soul, our national soul sustained the ANZAC spirit,” he said later, reflecting on a century in which the meaning of service has been carried not just by soldiers, but by families, communities, and the generations that follow.
At Martin Place in Sydney, thousands stood shoulder to shoulder under a clouded sky as the bugle called across the crowd. In Brisbane, Dutton joined locals in Dickson for a dawn service, where stories were shared not from books but from memory. In Perth, Adelaide, Darwin and countless smaller towns, the rituals played out: the laying of wreaths, the reading of names, the single minute of silence that somehow always feels too short and too long at the same time.
But not everything about this year’s commemorations passed without friction. In Melbourne, some attendees disrupted the ceremony with booing during the Acknowledgment of Country—an act quickly condemned by both Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh and Liberal MP Keith Wolahan. “This day belongs to all who served, and it must be held with respect,” said one volunteer marshall, shaken by the moment. It was a jarring note in an otherwise unified morning.
At the heart of every service was a shared understanding that remembrance cannot be inherited passively. It must be chosen. That is perhaps why a simple image—an elderly veteran with medals pinned neatly to his jacket, standing with a walker on the steps of the Opera House—resonated so widely when shared online. There are fewer of them now, the ones who served in the great wars, but they still show up. Still carry the weight. Still stand—however they can.
For many, the focus remained on Gallipoli, where over 8,000 Australians died in an eight-month campaign that has shaped the national story like few others. But this year’s reflections expanded further. Beyond the cliffs of the Dardanelles and into the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Papua New Guinea, the streets of Fallujah and the hills of Afghanistan. Australia’s military history doesn’t sit in a single place, nor does its memory.
In cities like Glenwood, the newer stories were also told—of Indian soldiers who fought under British command in 1915, of Sikh ANZACs who served after 1916, of migrants whose sons wear the same khaki as those who stood at Lone Pine. These stories are not additions. They are corrections. The record, like the remembrance, is still being written.
Lest we forget.
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