It's probably fitting that Remembrance Day was held indoors, with a reduced crowd, and a quieter ceremony, in 2020. It's been a year for that kind of adapting.
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At the City Diggers Club in Wollongong, a little over 60 people marked the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. It may have appeared to be a more sombre reflection on sacrifice and loss than in some years, but the moment had lost none of its power.
When the catafalque party entered to stand guard over a stand-in cenotaph made from the flags of Australia's three services, their commander didn't shout; he almost whispered. The sentries, from Wollongong's Bravo Company, 4/3 Battalion, Royal NSW Regiment, were synchronised perfectly.
But the rituals which sustain traditions such as these are not about size, or crowds, or volume, but about continuity - practising them over years, decades, the whole 102 years since the fend of World War One was first marked.
"Maintaining the tradition, maintaining that commemorative aspect, where you're ensuring that you acknowledge and you pay your respects to those that served before you," City of Wollongong RSL sub-branch president Rear Admiral Bruce Kafer.
"It is really important for veterans to experience these types of ceremonies to ensure they pay their respects.
"That whole focus of the catafalque party is on that silent reflection of troops who are commemorating their mates, their cobbers, who have been lost in action, and their presence around what would otherwise be, normally, a cenotaph or a grave site, is vital to to the conduct of the service."
Officer in command of Bravo Company, Captain James Parrish, said it was "really important to reflect on the service which a lot of junior members of the Australian Defence Force have undertaken overseas and domestically, to remember the service and sacrifice of other members who have served before us, who have trained us, and many of whom we are still connected with on days like today".
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