Mayor Otto's welcome - Kingaroy Memorial Park - ANZAC Day - Monday 25 April 2022
Mr President and members of the Kingaroy and Memerambi Sub-Branch, guest speaker Lieutenant Jacob Selby, ex-service men and women,
Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia and member for Maranoa, the Hon David Littleproud MP, member for Nanango, the Hon Deb Frecklington MP, fellow councillors, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
It is wonderful that all Australians can attend Anzac Day commemoration services again this year, not just here in Australia but overseas as well, including Gallipoli.
And doesn’t our local Memorial Park look great, with flowers a plenty and the lawns looking green and vibrant after what has been a wonderfully wet summer.
Mr Barry Krosch tells me that the palm trees in this park were planted over 100 years ago and the rotunda was officially opened in 1932, with the foundation for the Stone of Remembrance being laid on this day 100 years ago, ANZAC Day 1922.
The South Burnett Regional Council is in the process of developing a new master plan for Memorial Park and of course ensuring the park retains an appropriate and respectful acknowledgement and reminder of all who sacrificed so much for our community and nation will remain at the forefront of our minds throughout the park’s redevelopment.
Please see our council staff here today in having your say on the park’s redevelopment. We would love to hear your thoughts and welcome your input.
Looking back over the past two years, who would have thought that anything would stop us from gathering as a nation on ANZAC Day at every cenotaph around the country? While some communities, including here in Kingaroy were able to gather, millions of our fellow Australians could not. Yet during this historical pause, we found new ways to mark Anzac Day, as we always will. There were candles at dawn on driveways. Young children played their bugles and even bagpipes. We remembered them. We always will, come what may.
That two-year hiatus between nationwide public assemblies on Anzac Day has only served to show how much this day means to us and to our national identity.
Country towns throughout the South Burnett have an unwavering loyalty to the flag and to our fallen soldiers because our communities gave so much. Families here today and those whose names are engraved on our monuments have given everything.
The situation in Ukraine reminds us of the terrible nature of war, the brutality, the lost innocence, the tragedy. We can almost imagine what it must be like to see a brother or sister go off to war, to face a totally unknown and uncontrollable future.
We desire above all else for this situation never to happen again. But evil exists and can emerge on even the most peaceful horizon.
That demands courage to overcome, courage by our Defence forces that we shall never forget in Australia.
Today is when we gather as a grateful community to honour that courage, that sacrifice, rendered more precious by the COVID shadow of the past two years.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. We will not forget.
