First ride for a while, good to get out in the fresh air. We went to meet in Ohope with a friend from Gisborne. Stopped in at the Matata pub on the way home for a pint. Really just to show our support to the new owner as he's put a lot of work in freshening the place up and is making bikers very welcome. Management enjoyed the day out.
Hoping to get to the Anzac Day dawn service tomorrow. Big day for Aussies and Kiwis
:cheers:
Anzac Day with no restrictions Col so expecting big turnouts 🤞🤞👍🇦🇺🇳🇿
A proud day indeed. Lots of Diggers drinking Rum at 6am tomorrow. Good on them. :thankyou:
Great turnout for the Anzac Day Dawn Service at Mt Maunganui..
At the going down of the sun, he crouched in a shallow trench on that hell of exposed beaches with steeply rising foothills bare of cover. A landscape pockmarked with war's inevitable litter, piles of stores, equipment, ammunition, and the weird contortions of death sculptured in Australian flesh.
He saw the going down of the sun on that first ANZAC Day.
The chaotic maelstrom of Australia's preeminent blooding.
He fought in the frozen mud of the Somme and n a blazing destroyer exploding on the cold grey North Atlantic.
He fought on the perimeter and held the line at Tobruk and crashed in the flaming wreckage of a fighter in New Guinea.
He lived with the damned in the places cursed with names like Changi, Hellfire Pass and Sandakan.
He was your mate, the kid across the street, the med student at graduation, the mechanic in the corner garage,
the baker who baked your bread, the gardener who cut your lawn, the engineer that built your roads and bridges,
the clerk who sent your phone bill.
He was an Army private, a Naval commander, an Air Force bombardier. No man knows him. No name marks his tomb,
for he is every Australian serviceman.
He is the Unknown Soldier.
He died for a cause he held just in the service of our land, that we may say in freedom, I am proud to be an Australian.
We who are lucky enough to live in the world they helped to make safe from institutionalised evil can't expect any prizes for pronouncing that war is not glorious. They knew that. They fought the wars anyway, and that was their glory. It's obviously true that the world would have been a better place if the wars had never happened, but it's profoundly true that it would have been an infinitely worse place if they had not been fought and won. When we speak, or think of them, we would do well to remember, that for our tomorrow they gave their today.
Remembering not just all those who have served, many of whom paid the ultimate price,
but also those who spent the rest of their lives without them and those who came home changed forever, by the horrors of war.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old,
age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
at the going down of the sun,
we will remember them.
Lest we forget.
🇦🇺🇳🇿
Amen to that Chris :salute:
Great stuff Chris👍