Thousands of people in Australia and New Zealand held services Wednesday to honour their war veterans on a national holiday, including a march to remember oft-forgotten black soldiers who served.
Anzac Day marks the start of the gruelling World War I battle of Gallipoli, in which thousands of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) soldiers died, and which now honours all those who served in wartime. More than 10,000 people crowded the Australian War Memorial in Canberra for a dawn service and some 20,000 lined Sydney streets to cheer a veterans' parade.
The parade was led by two riderless horses to symbolise the passing of all Australian veterans from tthe Boer and first world wars. Meanwhile, a small number of indigenous ex-servicemen led about 300 supporters through the streets of inner-city Redfern, Sydney's Aboriginal heartland, to the applause of scores of onlookers.
About 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were involved in World War I and as many as 5,000 in World War II, but they received little or no recognition and faced racism and inequality when they returned home.
Ray Minniecon, an Aboriginal Anglican pastor who organised the march and church service for indigenous veterans, said he wanted to promote ties between black and white communities on Anzac Day, one of Australia's most revered holiday. "To us, this is about reconciliation, it's about recognition," he said. Thousands also attended dawn parades across New Zealand.
In Auckland, as a bugler sounded the Reveille, the crowd of 20,000 was told that playing it at the dawn service proclaimed the belief that the landing of the Anzac troops at Gallipoli was the "dawn of nationhood of New Zealand and Australia."
In Wellington, former Secretary of Defence Graham Fortune spoke of the sacrifices made by New Zealanders and Australians and said the two countries needed to remember their shared heritage.