AMIDST the mist, thousands mingled around the Ballarat Cenotaph as dawn approached.
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Then, as the service party mounted the Cenotaph, the sound of the crowd dwindled to a dull murmur.
It is 98 years since the events that happened at Gallipoli on the Turkish coastline that established Anzac legend. While the numbers of veterans of that campaign and others of World War II have dwindled, new generations of Australians attend the dawn service each year to honour the fallen.
Yesterday, perhaps the largest number yet attended the dawn service in Ballarat.
The crowd filled the area surrounding the Cenotaph between St Andrew's church on the northern side of Sturt Street and St Patrick's Cathedral to the south.
With the Australian, New Zealand and British flags gently flapping in the breeze at half mast, master of ceremonies Alex Sinnott welcomed those who had gathered, and introduced the speakers.
North Ballarat Football Club coach Gerard Fitzgerald delivered the history of the dawn service.
He told of Reverend Arthur Ernest White, who was a padre with the earliest Anzacs to leave Australia with the First AIF in 1914, conducted the first private service at Albany in Western Australia in 1914 at about 4am.
Reverend White then recited the immortal words "as the sun rises and and goeth down, we will remember them".
The following year Captain George Harrington placed flowers at the graves of the war dead at Toowoomba, drank with his friends at first light, and bugler sounded the Last Post and Reveille.
Then in 1927 a cenotaph was established in Sydney. Mr Fitzgerald explained these three events established the tradition that was continued in Ballarat yesterday.
Commander Matthew Doornbos, commanding officer of the HMAS Ballarat, then read the Anzac Requiem, asking all in attendance to remember those who went to war, some voluntarily and others reluctantly, who served in the cause of freedom and peace.
To remember those who fought with heroism and those who fought in terror, those who did not survive and those who returned but died too soon.
Reverend Bryan Nicholls delivered the commemorative prayer and the Lord's Prayer, before the crowd hushed again for the haunting sounds of The Last Post, played by bugler Tamara Barrett and the Piper's Lament by piper Sue Brant.
And then silence apart from the odd cough in the still dawn. The crowd at the Cenotaph yesterday included many young children, brought by their parents.
They will ensure the tradition continues, as Ballarat and Australia remembers. Lest we forget.
