Remembering, Kings Cross style
Amidst all the flag-waving and pomp of Remembrance Day, Kings Cross held its own small ceremony, Kings Cross style.
For years, Randall Nelson (AKA Animal) from the Kings Cross Bikers, a Vietnam veteran, has organised a Remembrance service at El Alamein Fountain, itself a memorial. But after Australian soldiers now known as the ‘Tsunami 9’ died in a Sea King helicopter crash while helping victims of the 2004 tsunami, Animal gathered the troops and planted a memorial rosemary garden in nearby Lawrence Hargraves Reserve. Now, Animal’s annual rituals are held there.
This year Wayside Chapel Pastor Graham Long conducted a short, improvised service before calling a minute’s silence.
“Today the phrase ‘moving forward’ is tacked on to most sentences, especially in the business world. But moving forward will be unlikely to happen with wisdom unless we are able to also look back and learn the lessons that brought us to our present moment,” he said.
He recalled soldiers who died in service – 60,000 Australians in the first war and 27,000 in the second war – as well as those who lost their lives in the conflicts of Korea, Vietnam and today Afghanistan.
“We will be wiser if we remember not just those who fought on our side but remember those who died on every side,” he said. “This day should give us an abhorrence of needless death. This day should cause us to join in with those diggers who returned from the Great War and declare, ‘No more wars’.”
by Michael Gormly
