Students from Mudgee’s primary schools read the winning poems and letters from the competition run by Club Mudgee and the Sub-Branch, with the service also punctuated by a number of musical interludes by the local Concert Band, the Mudgee Public choir and piper Richard McNeall. With the stirring address by guest speaker, Mudgee-born Colonel Jim Burns, bringing the significance of the day into perspective.

“Remembrance Day has special significance this year as we pause to mark the 100^th anniversary of the end of ‘the war to end all wars’, 100 years ago today on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns of the Western Front finally fell silent. After four continuous and bloody years of brutal conflict, in the hills of Gallipoli to the mud of the Western Front, to Palestine, in the air and on the sea,” he said.

“The suffering on all sides was immense, the Great War claimed over 38 million casualties. In country of Australia with its population of just under five million people over 440,000 men and women enlisted, of those over 330,000 served overseas and over 157,000 were wounded and 61,500 died.

“The affects of this war would impact almost every Australian family from the bush to the cities. Those who served will carry the scars both physical and non-physical emotional, while our nation would be changed forever.

“With the passing of 100 years all of our cherished WWI veterans are now gone, they’ve taken their place in the halls of this nation’s great history and their spirit is here in these commemorations. Today we honour lives devoted not to themselves but to us and in their last moments to one-another.

“Their legacy is that they gave us a deeper understanding of what it is and what it means to be Australian. And the knowledge that a life of value is one spent in the service of others irrespective of the cost.”