Thousands of veterans and local residents packed around the Sturt Street cenotaph this morning for Ballarat's annual dawn Anzac service.
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Gathered crowds watched in respectful silence as the Catafalque party - the soldiers who take guard over a significant monument for remembrance ceremonies - marched in to take their positions around the cenotaph.
The spirit of Anzac, with its qualities of courage, mateship and sacrifice, continues to have meaning and relevance for our sense of national identity
- Brett Macdonald, Anzac Day service MC
The Ballarat RSL Anzac flame - which was a gift from previous Ballarat RSL president Alex Tascas - burned brightly at one side.
"The spirit of Anzac, with its qualities of courage, mateship and sacrifice, continues to have meaning and relevance for our sense of national identity," the master of ceremonies Brett Macdonald said as he welcomed the many people present.
On a cool but still autumn morning, occasionally punctuated by the melodic warble of a magpie, Mr Macdonald introduced the theme of "coming home".
Then the current president of the Ballarat RSL Alan Douglass laid the Anzac Day dawn service wreath.
Padre Keith Lanyon, a former chaplain for the RAAF, also addressed the crowd.
"We pray that war may cease," he said. "We pray for peace."
The final part of the ceremony was led by Mr Douglass, including a reading of the famous words of the Ode of Remembrance, written by the British poet Laurence Binyon in 1914.
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them"
Then it was time for the Last Post, played by bugler Tamara Barrett who has performed the task at previous dawn services.
Peter Gunn drummed off the Catafalque party, made up of members of the 8th/7th Battalion Royal Victoria regiment, and the flag party of Ballarat Scouts and Guides marched away from the cenotaph.
Finally Neil MacDonald, whose father was a prisoner of war in Burma, played the Pipers Lament.
At the conclusion of the service, many veterans and residents wandered among the commemorative crosses by the cenotaph as the first hint of day glimmered to the east.
Among them was seven-year-old Toby Carroll (see photo at the top of the article), paying tribute to his grandfathers. You can read the moving story of one of his grandfathers, Mark Carroll, here.
WATCH THE DAWN SERVICE BELOW
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