Editorial
It was an Anzac Day like never before.
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Anzac Day is one of the most captivating, emotional and powerful days in this country without question.
While we could not gather together to pay our respects in the usual fashion due to current pandemic, there was something strangely powerful about our Anzac Day in isolation.
Instead of gathering around cenotaphs and memorials, we instead rose at dawn to light candles.
We stood in driveways alongside our neighbours in respectful silence.
Buglers rang out across the suburbs, the sounds of The Last Post reverberating through the cool morning air and making the hairs stand on end of any in earshot.
Some conducted their own backyard ceremonies.
Thanks to the goodwill of many in our community care packs were delivered to veterans right across the Illawarra as a way of saying thank you.
We knew going into Anzac Day 2020 that we had to come together as a community but stay apart and that's exactly what happened.
Residents in St Mary's Retirement Village, in Berkeley, gathered in front of their homes.
"It was beautiful, there were children across the road who were waving back at our residents and that gave us interaction with our neighbours that we've never really had before," and Village manager Jean Leaf said.
"People felt involved in the community, and that's what they've been missing in these past weeks."
Yes indeed it was.
It was hard to not feel overwhelmed with emotion seeing all of the images and videos of families across the country doing their best to commemorate our veterans and their sacrifices.
All that being said, nothing can replace the kinship and mateship many of the returned veterans normally share each and every Anzac Day.
While our nation made our Anzac Day in isolation the best it possibly could be we can only hope our veterans will get a chance to do this again when the social distancing restrictions have eased.
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