Students show up for community in ANZAC service

ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FOUR flags were placed at the grave sites of past service members by students to honour their sacrifice during an ANZAC memorial service held at Cobden Cemetery last Wednesday, April 23.

By wd-news

Camperdown Returned Services League sub-branch member Kevin Murray gave a speech as well as the introduction to the last post.

The service was a collaboration between Cobden Cemetery Trust, Cobden Technical School and Hampden P12 School.

Select senior students of Cobden Technical School arrived the day prior to clean the graves of service members and place the flags out of respect.

Cobden Cemetery Trust chairperson Gerard Gleeman said this memorial service was the fourth year running, and an original “brainchild” of fellow Cobden Cemetery Trust member Jo Beard.

“The school do most of the organisation and they’ve done a good job,” he said.

“There was a busload of children who came and did a good job placing the flags and cleaning the graves and they’ll do most of the speaking and poems.

“Each year the crowd’s getting bigger – the carpark’s gotten pretty full.

“Obviously, this kind of thing means a lot to the community, by the crowd.

“We’ve got 104 flags in a small town, so it just shows the number of people that served for their country and they deserve our respect.”

Cobden Technical School principal Narelle Holiday said she was “really proud” of the staff and students who were a part of the service.

“It’s such a respectful thing for our students to do in the community, and it’s a really good way for our senior students who come and clean the graves and put in the flags to understand the difference of the lives of the previous generations to what they have today,” she said.

“It’s a good opportunity for younger students to see what leadership opportunities are around and also, because our students are from the local community and like to support things in the community, they wait their turn in anticipation for it to be their turn to come.

“Now that we’ve got the 104 flags flying, the students can generally find someone when they come up, and get a better understanding of their community – families of their neighbours and friends who actually lost their young men.

“Even the older local community, because it’s still something that’s not talked about very often, they don’t realise when they’re out at their part time jobs, that some of the older men in their community served overseas.”

The commemoration service included a poem reading, an address by Camperdown Returned Services League sub-branch member Kevin Murray, a wreath laying, an introduction to the last post, an ode, the last post performed by Bernie Dunn, a minute of silence and both the New Zealand and Australian national anthems.

Attendees were invited to personally place a poppy at the conclusion of the service.