ANZAC Day in New York

Lest We Forget (...what we have, while we have it.)

It’s a bit of a solemn one today, folks. I’ll get back to being a complete goofball tomorrow, I promise.

Every year on April 25th, I wake up around 4:30am, while it’s still cold outside. I put on a suit and tie. I unlock my safe and take out my grandfather's medals, and clumsily pin them to my lapel in the dark. I put on the cheap old watch he gave me, then I leave my apartment to wander West to join the small contingent of fellow expat Aussies and New Zealanders at the foot of the USS Intrepid.

There, we partake in an annual ritual that most New Yorkers have no idea is happening while they sleep: We're celebrating ANZAC Day—a solemn commemoration that Americans might recognize as similar to their Memorial Day, though with its own distinct history and traditions.

The Hudson River wind is reliably brutal at that hour—a knife-edge chill that cuts through even the heaviest wool suit. We used to do this at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial downtown on Water Street, but post-pandemic, this has been the spot. Over the years, we've endured torrential rain, hail, and windstorms that threatened to send the smaller dignitaries airborne. Yet we always show up. We always commemorate.

The New York ceremony typically involves a priest, as well as various Australian diplomats and politicians. Representatives from the Turkish consulate also attend—a testament to how former enemies can become friends. American service members stand alongside us, a reminder of the military alliance that has seen Australian forces join the United States in virtually every major conflict since World War I.

ANZAC stands for Australian & New Zealand Army Corps, and April 25th marks the anniversary of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign—a devastating World War I battle where Australian and New Zealand forces suffered catastrophic casualties while attempting to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. The campaign became a defining moment for both young nations, cementing their identities separate from Britain despite fighting under its flag.

Most Americans are unaware that Australia and the United States have long shared a special bond, codified in the ANZUS Treaty of 1951. If it weren't for the US, Australia would be a very different country today. American forces helped defend Australia from the threat of Japanese invasion during World War II when it was most vulnerable.

My ‘poppy’ in my hometown paper for the 100th Anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. This lives on my wall in my apartment.

When the ceremony ends with the haunting notes of the Last Post—the bugler positioned just so, with the massive silhouette of the Intrepid looming above—I think of my grandfather (“Poppy”). I was very lucky I got to spend so much time with him growing up. When I still lived in my hometown, my sister or I used to march in the parade alongside him and the remaining survivors of his battalion. My whole family would turn out to cheer them on from the sidelines.

Chubby grandkids are always welcome at the ANZAC Day parade.

He marched until he couldn’t. Then he rolled.

Harry was just a kid from a small gold mining town called Kalgoorlie in Western Australia when he was enlisted. Right before he died, after 7 decades of silence, we sat in his quiet room at the nursing home, and he proceeded to tell me what he saw when he was deployed. It was a harrowing thing for a young 20-something kid from the bush to see. It rattled me. It rattled him. It changed his entire perspective on the world forever when he returned from the war, married my grandmother, and had a family. I wrote down everything he told me and fact-checked it against mission reports and declassified Australian Government reports from World War 2.

I think it’s important that I know it, regardless of how dark and unsettling it all is. I’ll never forget what he and his friends did to keep our country free from fascism. From totalitarian rulers with no regard for the human misery they spread with their poisonous ideas.

Looking up at the Australian and New Zealand flags fluttering next to the American stars and stripes, I feel the weight of my newly minted dual citizenship. I resent that the word ‘patriot’ has been co-opted by the right to mean you’re a flag-waving, AR-15-toting lunatic who storms the Capitol wearing a horned helmet. I’m patriotic about both my countries of citizenship, but I’m not a right-winger.

The relationship between our countries has become increasingly complex in recent years, which saddens me profoundly. Utterly unqualified people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flagrantly disregard the danger he puts the men and women in uniform in by using a personal phone to share confidential military data, and we all just have to stand by and watch through clasped hands, while people make excuses for him. Until he does it again. And again.

It makes me sick to my stomach to see the things that were fought for over the years flagrantly torn down in such short order, and the country’s relationships and global reputation fractured so severely. But on this day, in this pre-dawn ceremony, the connection between our countries remains unbroken—even if it's one that most of Manhattan sleeps through.

Harry was my favourite person. When he died, he left his service medals to me in his will, and I've never missed an ANZAC Day since. I hope enough people carry on the tradition to keep their memory alive in the minds of the generations who’ve enjoyed the world’s longest unbroken stretch of ‘peacetime’ in human history.

I was sitting with Poppy at lunch in Perth in November 2016 when Trump —the petulant child who blocked me on Twitter— first won the US Presidency. I’d returned home because he was very sick—it would be one of the last times I ever saw him. As we watched on my phone, each state turning red, I told him what was happening back in the US. He shook his head with the exasperated resignation only a 98-year-old war veteran could convey: "People will never bloody learn."