As I write, ANZAC Day is drawing to a close. For those non-Australians out there, ANZAC Day is a national day of solemn remembrance of all our war dead in Australia and New Zealand. We also observe Remembrance Day/Armistice Day on November 11, but ANZAC Day is special. If you're interested, there's a Wikipedia article about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day Anyway, there were a lot of ceremonies all around the country, as is traditional, and the tiny town near where I live, with its population of around 900 (approximately 1,200 people in the entire Shire - what Americans would call a County) is like a lot of other tiny towns, with a modest war memorial and a small but active branch of the Returned Services League. It was nice to see a couple of young veterans as well today, who must have served in Afghanistan and been visiting family. It was on the news that the RAAF was going to perform a flyover at the Busselton ceremony at 11:00am, but what most of us didn't expect was to see four Pilatus PC-9s, roundels proud on their wings, go screaming overhead our little memorial with its flag at half-mast, dead on target and in perfect formation shortly after 11:00. Busselton is a technically a city, a regional centre. You expect that sort of thing. We're tiny, and the Air Force could have conserved fuel and had the formation team turn around and go straight back to base, but no, they took the long way round and flew over other, much smaller ceremonies dotted around the lower south west instead before returning to RAAF Pearce. It was a nice touch, and incredibly thoughtful. Okay, so it wasn't dead on 11:00am, and so what? They turned up to acknowledge a tiny little ANZAC Day commemoration in a tiny little town, kind of connecting us all together with all the other commemorations around the place, and that's pretty damned awesome.

As the daughter of a man who served in two wars (one especially nasty), I was touched by this. I literally wiped away a few tears. God bless those flyboys!

Here's cheers to all those who served, are serving and have loved ones in the armed forces. I dips me lid to RAAF boys for going the extra mile today, too. Lest We Forget