Rain threatened early and then the day heated up as people across the Tweed Coast stopped on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to remember.
At Kingscliff, Major Paul Randall, Royal Australian Artillery from The Land Warfare Cente at Canungra, was guest speaker as more than 200 children and adults gathered at the cenotaph to remember the fallen from the Great War and all wars since.
“We had about 40 children from St Anthony’s, Kingscliff High School, Cudgen Public School and Kingscliff Primary and 150-200 adults, with many paying their respects from the street,” Brian Vickery from the Kingscliff RSL sub branch said.
“An eerie, quiet enveloped Kingscliff as I announced it was two minutes to eleven o’clock and asked Don Riley to play ‘The Lament’ as a prelude to the last post – everything stopped, including the traffic.
“The silence was absolute, the community was totally reverent and the haunting sound of the last post was totally dominant – a wonderful reaction from a respectful public.”
At Pottsville, the crowd was much smaller, but no less reverent as they gathered to pay their respects.
The crowd included 92-year-old Philip Bonnor, the first secretary of the Pottsville RSL Sub-branch which kicked off in 1948.
RSL president John Hawes led the servic, which, like Kingscliff’s event, also included Kingscliff High School students. In fact it was Kingscliff students Wade Jensen and Caitlan Davis who read the address for the day. While Wade reflected on the First world war, Caitlan talked about an event that brought home the realities of war to the students of Kingscliff High – the loss of former Kingscliff student Sapper Rowan Robinson in Afghanastan this year. Both ceremonies remembered Sapper Robinson.
