Listening to the ANZAC Day dawn service
Every year on ANZAC Day I look forward to listening to the dawn service from Martin Place on the radio. This dawn service is on the television, of course, on almost all networks, but I find there is something very special about listening to the service rather than seeing it.
My preference is to listen in a dark room, maybe even in bed with no light whatsoever. The service becomes more intimate in this way and allows a mental image to be drawn of a quiet, humble service by candlelight occurring just as the sun starts to make its light known. More importantly it allows me to imagine what our servicemen and servicewomen endure in dark and hostile locations around the world, and specifically given it is ANZAC Day and the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in World War I, how our soldiers in that time must have felt, in the dark, on the other side of the world, with their only link to the rest of the world being a radio if they were lucky and an occasional letter service at other times.
I made the mistake one year of turning on the television for the Martin Place dawn service and was aghast at the entire area being floodlit. I know light is important for television, but it ruins the atmosphere of a very important and solemn event in my view.
The marches during the day require light and a generally happy atmosphere of gratitude, but this is not the case for the dawn services which occur in the dark as a commemoration of the events of the fateful landing at Gallipoli at dawn on April 25, 1915, and deserve a solemn atmosphere which dark and candlelight provide, and floodlights do not.
May your ANZAC Day be special and reflective.
Samuel
1 comment April 25th, 2024 at 02:05am