Event: Australia

Anzac Day

When:	25 Apr 2008 (annual)
Where:	Australia
Costs:	Free
Opening Hours:	All day

Anzac Day is Australia and New Zealand's Remembrance Day, a solemn and moving occasion. ANZAC is an acronym of Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The day commemorates the start of their involvement in the First World War: a matter of great national pride for a fledging independent state, freed from British rule less than two decades before.

The actual events following the army's invasion of Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 followed the typical sorry pattern of the history of World War One.

As usual, the opponents were misjudged and the expected easy defeat of the Turks resulted in eight months of bloody battle and an eventual dilapidated withdrawal by the allies from the area. Nevertheless, the Anzac soldiers fought bravely, and their entrance into the war is rightly commemorated as a great day.

Celebrations follow typical memorial day patterns of services, parades and the laying of wreathes. At dawn there are special services to mark the exact time that the attack began. A traditional five minute silence is also observed, in respect to the dead.