By Brett Kennedy
THE Limestone Coast’s largest public Remembrance Day service will go ahead but residents are urged to comply with event COVID requirements or risk jeopardising the future events, including Anzac Day 2021.
Mount Gambier Community RSL president Bob Sandow said Wednesday’s service at Vansittart Park would be capped at less than 1000 people as part of the COVID-Safe planning.
Mr Sandow said just as the community found a way to acknowledge service men and women on Anzac Day, new measures were being taken to ensure Remembrance Day would be inclusive to all.
This includes a livestream of the morning service, which will be shown at the RSL branch and available on its website for public screenings, such as at schools or community spaces.
Eight Lions Club of Mount Gambier volunteers will be stationed around Vansittart Park to take attendees’ details for contact tracing, while invited schools and community groups have been limited to two representatives.
“My philosophy is if you don’t know the person next to you, stand away from them,” Mr Sandow said.
“There’s plenty of room in the gardens so spread out,” he said.
“If we can’t handle this, we won’t be doing Anzac Day.”
After a year of disruptions to public events, Mr Sandow said he was pleased the community had a chance to pay their respects.
“We would never not honour our veterans as an RSL, whether we do it in private is another thing,” Mr Sandow said.
“I like what we did Anzac Day,” he said.
“There was a lot more children standing at the end of the driveway with mum and dad that might not normally do anything Anzac Day, learning what it’s about.”
But Mr Sandow said the public services held a special place in the community, including with veterans, sharing a moving conversation he once had with World War II veteran Cyril Blackmore.
“It was when we started to encourage the kids to come to Anzac Day and Cyril told me it brought a tear to his eye when they would lay wreaths,” Mr Sandow said.
“He said ‘Bob, that’s why we went to do some of the things we did. So they could be here’.”
The Catafalque Party will move into position around the war monument at 10.30am.
While Remembrance Day this year will nationally commemorate 100 years since the end of World War I, Mr Sandow will use his platform to highlight the Boer War.
“It is the war before, that people have forgotten,” Mr Sandow said.
Australia supported the British Empire during the conflict in southern Africa, which took place from October 11, 1899 to May 31, 1902.
“We lost 600 men fighting in the Boer War – we weren’t even a nation when it started, we were six colonies,” Mr Sandow said.
“Some of the early people had to pay their own way to go, they had to pay 20 pounds to go and fight,” he said.
A memorial on the corner of Bay Road and Lake Terrace commemorates five soldiers from the region who took part in the conflict.
“I call them the fathers of our Anzacs, and they are the fathers of our Anzacs.”
