Around Australia special activities are being organised to commemorate the centenary of Anzac Day on April 25. We’ve highlighted a few of the typical ways you can spend Anzac Day, especially if you live in Brisbane, but there are services, parades, exhibitions and performances taking place all around Queensland.
Attend a Dawn Service
Pay your respects to the brave men and women who fought for our freedom in WWI and WWII at a dawn service. These have been held since the 1920s in Australian capitals and towns. The largest service is held in Brisbane in Anzac Square between Ann Street and Adelaide Street with video screens set up to accommodate the large crowds expected to turn out for the 2016 centenary. Services usually start around 4.30am and typically involve readings, hymns, bugle calls and a laying of wreaths.
Have a Gunfire Breakfast
After the dawn service, almost all RSL clubs serve a community breakfast or ‘Gunfire Breakfast’ to guests to remember the breakfasts the Anzacs ate. Back then it would have consisted of biscuits, jam, tinned Bully Beef and coffee with rum or condensed milk. Today it’s a more hearty affair with bacon, eggs, and sausages, with a hot cup of tea or coffee laced with rum.
Watch an Anzac Day Parade
If you wish to skip the dawn service you can always attend a daytime march which are held all across Queensland, and is a parade of former and current serviceman and women. In Brisbane, this commences at 9.30am and finishes at 1 pm. It starts at the Cultural Forecourt at South Bank before heading into the city. Adelaide Street is recommended to be the best viewing spot, but there will be large viewing screens set up for the parade in different spots. After the parade, a live broadcast of the Gallipoli Dawn Service is screened. Expect around 10 – 15 thousand people taking part in the march and around 50,000 spectators.
Play Two-Up
If you head to a pub after the service and parade, then you may encounter a favourite Anzac Day tradition, the gambling game of ‘Two-Up’. This was played extensively by Aussie soldiers during WWI, but now you can only play Two-Up on Anzac Day, it’s illegal at any other time. How it works is a ‘spinner’ is chosen, and they throw two coins in the air. The rest of the players take bets on how the coins will fall. Two heads up and the spinner wins, two tails and the spinner loses, one head and one tail and the spinner throws again.
Eat Anzac Biscuits
If you don’t do anything else on Anzac day be sure to at least have an Anzac biscuit with your afternoon cuppa. This iconic biscuit was sold by the mothers, wives and girlfriends of the Aussie troops at fetes and galas to raise money for the war effort. Made from rolled oats, sugar, flour, coconut, butter, golden syrup and baking soda, they have a long shelf-life as they don’t contain eggs.