While Anzac Day commemorations will be different for everyone this year, for Oscar Kosloff there will be a very important piece missing - his great mate and World War II veteran Tom Rush.
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The pair struck up an unlikely friendship four years ago when they shook hands in a bus stop after a speaker at the Ballarat Anzac Day service urged those in the crowd to shake the hand of a soldier.
But Mr Rush died in October, aged 97, breaking a bond that had seen the pair march together in each Anzac Day march since they met.
Oscar and his family have planned their own dawn service at the end of their Alfredton driveway on Anzac Day, and neighbours in their close-knit court will join on their own properties.
Oscar and his siblings Harry and Lila have created candle holders and will hold a framed picture of Tom that they usually have in their bedroom.
Mum Kel will play a recording of the Last Post on a speaker from her phone as they pay their respects for Tom and all the other servicemen and women who served before and after him.
"Every year when Anzac Day gets closer, that fire in his heart lights up again and he starts to talk about soldiers and service. Now he's in grade three and starting to look in to the Anzacs he's like 'I know all about this'," Ms Kosloff said.
"A little bit of me thinks Oscar one day might become a soldier too.
"Anzac Day this year will be different, and it's kind of a nice way to ease Oscar in to it because no one can celebrate Anzac Day like normal so we will be at home and stand in the driveway.
"Oscar marched with Tom every year after that meeting ... and each year we would ask Tom whether he wanted to march again and he would say 'as long as I'm alive I will do it for Oscar'."
The family usually each wear a red poppy of remembrance, but this year they have just one between the five of them.
"We've only got one poppy because all our other poppies we buried with Tom ... and the man who sells the poppies each year obviously hasn't been there. We gave all our poppies but one to Tom."
After tracking Tom down in the days following that first handshake, the Kosloff family became close friends with the World War II veteran who enlisted in the Australian Army in 1941 and served until 1945 as a trained typist and in the army's motor and water transportation section.
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Oscar was devastated when Tom died.
"Oscar was pretty down at the time but it kind of hit all of us to be honest. When somebody is that age you know it's not far away but Oscar was pretty sad. We went to the funeral, all five of us, and it was a nice way for Oscar especially to say goodbye."
"It seems a little bit unreal sometimes because we didn't see him every week, but we did see him regularly, and suddenly you realise time has passed and it has been a while."
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