By CAMERON LUCADOUWELLS
THE best way to remember Diggers is to “build a country” they would have wanted, a crowd at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Dandenong was told.
No longer does 11 November mark just the end of World War I, Dandenong RSL president John Wells OAM told the crowd at the Pillars of Freedom.
It also comprises Australia’s subsequent conflicts, and conflicts that impacted the waves of migrants who have settled here.
“We’re no longer an Anglo-Saxon society. That’s one of our strengths,” Mr Wells said.
The moment of silence endured longer than usual at this ceremony. Due to the absence of a microphone, most speakers struggled to project their voices over the Lonsdale Street traffic din.
However, Mr Wells’s booming voice cut through traffic noise to strike meaning into a crowd including Vietnamese and Australian veterans and Dandenong High School students.
He said a meaningful memorial for those who risked their lives, suffering hardship, loneliness and fear, would be for “young folk” to “continue to build a country that the Diggers would have wanted”.
Few veterans from the two world wars were still with us; so the day was less about “individual people”, he said.
What had survived were the values that we should remember – the courage, patriotism and black humour.
“There’s nothing wrong with patriotism. It gives us comfort. It needs to be nurtured [otherwise] we’ll lose it before we know it,” Mr Wells said.
Mr Wells recounted meeting a former soldier who spent 17 years in a re-education camp after World War II.
“I must be a slow learner,” the veteran told Mr Wells.
“That’s funny,” Mr Wells told the crowd. “But it’s also not funny.”
