ANZAC Stories

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, and I probably should have put up this post last week, but I didn't think of it at the time. Still, better late than never.

Did you know that if you plant Flanders Poppy seeds on ANZAC Day (25 April), they are in flower for Remembrance Day (11 November)? I try to remember to do this each year. I will be a bit late this year as I have only just put in my order for seeds today (doh!), but we should be able to plant them early next week. I order my seeds from the Diggers Club in Victoria. They sell heirloom, heritage and organic seeds and plants and run an excellent mail order service off their site or over the phone. The code for the Poppies is SWPO.

ANZAC Day is very important in Australia (no offence to New Zealanders, but I am not going to pretend to talk for you) - a time to remember the fallen and those who came home and to reflect on the brutality and futility of armed conflict, a time to urge our politicians to do better to avoid war. I often think if they were required to serve on the frontline of every conflict they engaged in or provoked or supported, we may well see a whole lot less of it. Would John Howard and George W. Bush have been so quick to thumb their noses at the UN if they knew they had to be in the first wave into Baghdad?

There is an excellent piece about ANZAC Day written by Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday. It is a fair way in, but scroll down to just past the photo of Wilfred Owen. It is well worth a read for those who missed it.

I am going to put up a few posts about ANZACs in our family. These are ones from my Mum's side, as I am most familiar with them. There are ANZACs on Dad's side and on my husband's, but I need more information to confidently post about them. A goal for next year.