ANZAC Day greetings to readers from Australia and New Zealand
A nzac Day Dawn Service , King's Park, Western Australia, 25 April 2009 . I posted this three years ago. Many contributors to and readers of this blog are North Americans and may not be aware of ANZAC Day or of its significance in Australia and New Zealand. The Columbans arrived in Australia in 1919 and in New Zealand two years later. Our arrival in those two countries was only a few years after the event in the Great War, World War I, that had a huge impact on their people of European origin, mainly British and Irish at the time, the landing in Gallipoli, Turkey, on 25 April 1915. Many of my confreres are from these two countries and because of that, their history is part of mine. I paid my first visit to Australia just after Easter 1990. I was there for the 75th anniversary of the landing of the first members of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, the 'Anzacs', in Gallipoli. That particular anniversary generated new interest in this event. The Aus