To commemorate ANZAC Day this week our Year 10 History Students investigated the tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier. The students started the lesson by reading then Prime Minister Paul Keating’s Eulogy for the Unknown Australian Soldier delivered on Remembrance Day 1993. The students were moved by the entire speech, but one line stood out for them in particular “He is all of them. He is one of us”.

The students then researched the Unknown Soldier as a person. They discovered that, like Prime Minister Keating had said in the opening lines of his eulogy “We do not know this Australian’s name and we never will”. What they did discover was that he was one of 45,000 Australian soldiers who died fighting on the Western Front in the First World War. He was one of 11,000 Australian Soldiers who are still listed as missing from that terrible conflict over 100 years ago. He was buried alongside many of his comrades in Adelaide Cemetery, Villiers-Bretonneux France and was chosen to be re-interred at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra in 1993.

The Year 10s had a long and meaningful discussion about the importance of the Unknown Australian Soldier for the families who lost loved ones in that conflict. Students discussed how there were 45,000 families who could not visit the grave of their relative buried in a far-off battlefield. 11,000 families did not even know where that grave was, if there was one at all.

Their conversation expanded to the importance of ANZAC Day and how it has become a day to remember all Australian and New Zealand Soldiers who have served their countries in war and peacekeeping duty. The students shared their personal stories of how their families have been impacted by war.

All students and families are encouraged to commemorate ANZAC Day in their own way this year. The Dawn Service from the Shrine of Remembrance will be live-streamed across a number of social media platforms. Dawn Services will run at local RSLs, details can be found below. You can also commemorate at home. “Light Up the Dawn” has several ways in which you can Commemorate ANZAC Day at home, details are on the website below.

Dawn Service Details: http://www.rslvic.com.au/media/419107/Sub-Branch-ANZAC-Day-Activities-13.pdf.

Light Up the Dawn: https://lightupthedawn.com.au/

Here is some work and photos of our kids participating in Anzac Day activities during the week.

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