The rat-a-tat-tat of Jim Davidson’s snare drum has resonated through the streets and fetes of the New England town since 1949.

Mr Davidson, 86, started the Manilla Caledonian Pipe Band when he moved to town from his native-Scotland as a teenager.

While he started the town band as a youngster, he said the hardest thing was getting youth interested, involved and taking-up the baton, so to speak.

“The hard part is getting young people to come into it,” Mr Davidson told The Leader.

“Getting them interested in such a way that they are going to sit down and do a bit of work.

“It takes a lot of practice to play the bagpipes and drumming takes a lot of practice too.”

The Manilla-man has had plenty of practice banging the drums, first picking-up the sticks when he was 10-years-old.

Just a few years later, he started the Caledonian band where he took up the role of drum tutor and he’s played with the group ever since.

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Anzac Day is probably the chief event for the band, but Mr Davidson said they’ll provide the tunes “any other time we’re required, street parades, church fetes if they want us”.

While his voice is still coloured with a Scottish accent, he said playing drums on April 25 bears special significance.

“My father was killed in the second world war,” he said.

“It does mean a lot to me, I’ve been connected with the army for quite a while.

“I went to military school for four-and-a-half  and that’s where I learned drumming.”

When asked what it meant to lead the march down Manilla Street on Anzac Day, he simply said “it feels good”.

Hundreds of locals lined the town’s main street for the morning service.

Sub-branch treasurer Des Stark said it was a day to “remember all of the men and women of the Australian Defence Force”.

“Anzac Day is a day where we salute those young men who served 100 years ago and celebrate the freedom we enjoy which was paid for in blood, by those young soldiers,” he said.

WHILE it’s a day to honour Australian service in war, Manilla’s European contingent was more than happy to follow suit.

Spaniard Ciriaco "Jimmy" Jimenez told The Leader there was “no more important day on the calendar” than April 25.

As such, Mr Jimenez believes only the best vestments suit a day with that much gravitas.

It’s the only day of the year he wears his three-piece suit which he has owned for close to 50 years.

He served for three years in the army reserves in his native-Spain.

He also said the day holds personal significance where he remembers his two uncles who served in WWII.

“Too many people sacrificed themselves to save their country,” he said.

The Manilla RSL sub-branch paid special homage to its fallen with this year’s commemoration and installed an Australian flag on the grave’s of ex-service people in the town’s cemetery.

It was part of the nation-wide initiative, Honour Our Fallen.