Veterans, like 100-year-old Keith Douglas Fitzpatrick, arrived in style, chauffeured by members of the Noosa Beach Classic Car Club, as they led the parade in Tewantin’s morning Anzac Day service on the 108th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.
Thousands flanked Poinciana Avenue as the parade, that included veterans and school children, made its way to the beat of the impressive visiting New Zealand Veterans Band, to the cenotaph.
The ceremony was marked by moving speeches from special operations Captain Harrison Williams, Noosa MP Sandy Bolton and Noosa Mayor Clare Stewart.
It began with MC Bob Upham telling the crowd a little about retired Sergeant Major Fitzpatrick’s military service.
Born in 1923 Fitzpatrick signed on for service in 1941, underage, using his brother’s birth certificate and soon after headed to the Kokoda Track in PNG where he took part in conflict between the Australian and Japanese forces, there losing his best mate, Vic Stewart. After WWII Fitzpatrick remained in the armed forces, served on the HMAS Sydney when it attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, before training Vietnam veterans then retiring in 1965.
It was a different war that Captain Williams referred to in his speech but the same message of mateship and heroics that epitomise the Anzac spirit.
Williams showed the crowd a photo taken in 2005 of three smiling mates in an armed vehicle in Afghanistan.
As a serviceman he had searched for the meaning of Anzac Day and found it in the photo and story of the men in it.
All three men shared laughs, heroics and tales, Williams said. They were the finest operators, devoted to their mates and highly regarded. By 2013 all three, in different instances, had been killed in action.
They were three everyday Aussies who gave everything they had.
