The man behind the Last Post at some of Ballarat's Anzac Day services

Mr Hawkes will play at the Arch Of Victory service at 8am, followed by the Sebastopol service at 9am, Clunes soon after and then at Alfredton Oval for the BFNL match between Ballarat and Lake Wendouree.

"If you can do it, why would you not do it?," he said.

"The blokes in the trenches didn't get a chance, did they? And the ladies ... didn't get a chance. Some didn't come back, some were so bad when they got back."

Mr Hawkes said music ran in his family with his grandfather and father both brass players and members of the Maryborough Band.

"I've been a brass player since I was 10."

His dad also played the bugle at Anzac Day services around Ballarat including in Sebastopol and Clunes.

Mr Hawkes joined the national service in 1970 where he played in the band, before returning a few years later.

"When I came out (of national service), I didn't do anything that Anzac Day," he said.

"Dad said to me, 'come out to Clunes', ... so I went out there with him and that's where it all started ...'75."

Since then, Mr Hawkes has played The Last Post and The Rouse at Sebastopol and Clunes and, for more than a decade, at The Arch Of Victory.

He said after all of those years it's not nerves that get him, it's the cold which can impact his performance, relying on his mouth (and sometimes fingers) to play the flugelhorn.

"It's a control of tightening lips and to do with the fingers as well," he said.

"I've got a couple of bugles but I don't use those ... a cornet is very brassy, like a trumpet. If you listen to a bugle you'll hear it's much more mellow, so I like to use the next one up from a cornet, which is a flugelhorn.

"It's got the same pitch, but a bigger bell, and it's a much more mellow sound, and I like to use that.

There's valves on a flugelhorn, but you don't have to use them. You can just play the open tubing."

On Anzac Day 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Mr Hawkes went to the lookout near Sovereign Hill and played the Last Post at 6am - as residents were encouraged to stand in their driveways and light a candle in honour of the Anzacs, ceremonies were only significantly reduced numbers or even cancelled all together.

"There must have been a gentle wind from the west and blowing it (the sound) towards Main Road, Fussell Street. It was live streamed, and there was lots of, 'oh, we heard it', and that's good."

Mr Hawkes said he had no plans to give it up anytime soon.

"I'll try and do it as long as I can," he said.

See the list of Anzac Day services around the Ballarat region in 2024 here.