During an election forum on TV through the week, one of the participants asked: They want us all to be just Australian, but what is an Australian?
I thought of that at this morning’s Anzac Day dawn service at Mawson Park in the heart of Campbelltown.
The service starts at 5.30am, but most people arrive long before that and form a shadowy circle around the war memorial half way up the park from Queen Street.
And while waiting for the start of the service, you just can’t help thinking about those young men, a large number of them from Campbelltown, who on April 25, 1915, created the legend of Anzac.
You try to imagine what they would have been thinking moments before the order was given to launch the attack at Gallipoli, darkness still all around them.
Maybe they thought of their family back home or a sweetheart they kissed goodbye before getting on the ship to take them to the battlefields of Europe.
We all know what ensued on the beaches of Gallipoli, a huge loss of life as the Turkish defence forces perched on top of the cliffs mowed down our boys with machine guns.
But our soldiers pressed on in an incredible display of bravery, of gallantry, of sacrifice.
And it is these enduring qualities that we pay our respects to every year on April 25.
And why so many thousands of people attend the hundreds of dawn services in cities and towns across this great country of ours.
In 2015, the centenary of Anzac Day, the biggest attendances ever were recorded, along with dire predictions that it would be downhill from there.
But not so, as thousands still hear the call and get out of bed and make their way to a dawn service.
At Mawson Park this morning – and every other Anzac Day dawn service – nobody was asking what it is to be an Australian.
They didn’t need to: standing there in the darkness next to strangers, hearing the bugler play The Last Post, paying tribute to duty and sacrifice was enough.
Lest we forget.
