At 6am on Monday morning, almost a hundred people gathered at John McInnes Square for the dawn service in Coleambally.
The sound of the bugle silenced the crowd while the Darlington Point-Coleambally RSL sub-branch secretary Ken Martin tried to sum up the importance of the day.
“Defining a digger is a bit like trying to define class, it's hard to define it, but you know it when you see it,” an exert read from Patrick Lindsay’s The spirit of the digger summed up Ken Martin’s address to the people of Coleambally.
“Anzac Day provides us with an opportunity to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, with a total of 102,729 deaths recorded up until 2013.”
In front of generations of young and old, ex-servicemen and woman to civilians, Mr Martin gave a touching speech on the history of the day,” he said. “It's difficult to say when the first dawn services were held, as many were instigated from veterans, clergyman and civilians from all over the country.
“In 1927, a group of returned men, returning at dawn from an Anzac Day function held the night before, came upon an elderly woman laying flowers at the Sydney Cenotaph
“Joining her in this private remembrance, the men later resolve to institute a dawn service the following year.
“Some 150 people gathered at the cenotaph in 1928 for a wreath laying.
“This is generally regarded as the beginning of organised dawn services.”
The service included the laying of wreaths followed by biscuits and coffee with some extra “additives.”
