It was a sharp, cold morning, still dark when the first car pulled up.
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A simple flag and two hats on a table in a driveway and a backyard fire pit serving as the temporary Eternal Flame sat on the front driveway.
With Australia in COVID-19 lockdown, and ordinary services cancelled, two dozen veterans and their families shivered in anticipation of their own "street Anzac Day".
First the ode. Then the Last Post.
As young local trumpet player Jack Herden finished the reveille, you could hear the echoes of another bugler on a driveway somewhere in the distance.
It was a far cry from the pomp and ceremony of the traditional march. But army man Cec Bayliss said it was "bloody nice".
"I thought, as we did the Last Post, it was beautiful," he said.
Mr Bayliss has not missed an Anzac Day ceremony since 1968, when he came back from Vietnam.
The veteran of Long Tan remembers a concert by Little Pattie and Col Joyce and the Joy Boys was shattered by artillery fire on August 18, 1966.
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Within minutes Lieutenant Gordon Sharp, a fellow Tamworth boy, had been shot and killed out in a rubber plantation, as his heavily-outnumbered platoon fought for their lives.
"I grew up with him. We went into the army together, and we were at in Kapooka for basic training and he was off to officer training," Mr Bayliss said.
Lt Sharp was the first of 18 Australians to be killed that day, with another 24 wounded, in a surprise engagement which claimed the lives of over 200 Vietnamese soldiers.
Mr Bayliss said Anzac day was for them.
"We do it for the fallen," he said.
But with COVID-19 forcing the closure of every major gathering in the country, they had to improvise.
Navy veteran Bob Fisher, said the community had come together for the occasion; once they got a bugler someone volunteered lights, another neighbor offered some poppies.
It was just one of countless little services across the city and around the region,.
"In a way it's more of a street Anzac Day, isn't it," he said.
"Aussie ingenuity mate, you make do with what you've got!"
Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
