I guess I'm the only person reading this who had a holiday today (Denyer?) - I don't know if any of you know about Anzac Day - but it's a strange one.
Basically it commemorates the most pointless battle in the most pointless war in history. It also celebrates the amazing bravery, nobility, mateship of the poor bastards who were shafted by Churchill and Kitchener etc. - and the general cruelty and stupidity of our species as a whole. It really is a day that forces you to contemplate the very best and the very worst of what humanity has to offer. I don't know if any other country really has anything to compare to it.
Generally it's celebrated by getting drunk and playing two-up. I've celebrated it at many places over the years, including on battlefields in the Pacific. Today, however I took my daughter to the zoo. (Her favourite animal seemed to be the sheep - $50 to get in - monkeys, bears, whatever - all on show - and she liked the sheep!).
In 1915, on the first Anzac Day - Australian troops were sent to Turkey to kill people who weren't their enemies becasue a powerful foreign empire asked them to. Now in 2005 Australian troops are still doing the same thing in Iraq.
It would be nice to think we could have learned something from the barbarity of 1915. We haven't.
http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/
Happy ANZAC Day
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Caravan Ray
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