Community
2 May, 2025
Honouring our Diggers
IN a powerful display of remembrance, thousands of Cairns residents lined the streets from the crack of dawn to pay tribute to veterans and service personnel on ANZAC Day last Friday.
This year marked the 110th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli and thousands of people in Cairns attended en masse to the dawn service and ANZAC Day parade to pay tribute to all servicepeople, veterans and fallen soldiers of all conflicts.
Although this year there was no morning service at the Cairns Cenotaph, that didn’t slow the community down as locals still attended in the thousands and clapped along all veterans and servicemen and women during the parade.
“From a defence point of view, the community support was there throughout the whole morning,” said HMAS Cairns commanding officer Andrew Thorpe.
“We had a lot of school aged children right through to the elderly and the veteran community and it really shows that support the community does give to our uniformed members of army, navy and air force.
“I think it’s vital for us and the community to keep engaging with our veterans. If we look back to the essence of what the ANZACs did on the morning of April 25 when they crossed the lines and went into battle in Gallipoli, there were a lot of sacrifices, a lot of heartache and so having the younger generation understand why they did what they did sets a great foundation for the great life that we live in Australia right now.”
Earlville resident and Iraq veteran Douglas Grimsley came with his family to the ANZAC Day parade. He said it had become a family tradition.
“I served in the army and got deployment to Iraq – that was about 20 years ago – and we’re here to pay tribute to the ANZACs and I think it’s important to get the kids involved. We’ve been coming together for some years now,” he said.
“It’s very important to keep this tradition alive, especially for me. It’s about bringing my kids up with the history of the ANZACs and myself, my grandfather and my family has had other service members to teach them and make them aware of the service we provided to the country.”
Mooroobool Vietnam veteran Ed Spanner said it was important to keep the ANZAC spirit alive and remind Australians of the sacrifices made by Indigenous soldiers and people of colour for the freedoms we enjoy today.
“I was part of the 35th air force squadron, I’m Australian but I grew up in PNG and I spent a year in Vietnam and was part of the air force for six years,” he said.
“ANZAC Day is, not a day of celebration, but for commemoration and remembrance of those who died for this country and one fact that a lot of Australians don’t realise is that if it wasn’t for our ancestors in PNG, Australia would have been invaded by Japan.
“Serving has taught me discipline and it changes your life forever.”
Neil Wattam and his son Thomas from Edmonton were at the Cenotaph. “I was in the New Zealand navy for 20 years and now my son is in the navy cadets. We’ve got history, family’s been in the war, died in the war so commemorating ANZAC Day is important to me and I hope to pass it onto the next generation,” Mr Wattam said.
Paul Anning from Trinity Park said: “I served with the air force for nine years from 1982, I did deployments to Indonesia, Malaysia and Sinai Desert and I think it’s important for the community to commemorate ANZAC Day because many people have gone out of their way to protect our way of life and, if it isn’t continued, it’s going to be forgotten.”
