Gallipoli Memorial Day is annually observed in Turkey on March 18 |
Commemorations at Gallipoli in Turkey and on what was the Western Front in France will be among events scrapped this year because of the pandemic.
Minister for Veterans Affairs Darren Chester said the decision to cancel was made with great regret, but the safety of people involved was most important.
Gallipoli was the bloody battleground fought over by Australian and New Zealand forces who landed there on April 25, 1915 during World War I.
The site in Turkey attracts thousands of Australians every year who honour the sacrifice of past generations."
To be honest, as an Australian living pretty much my whole life in Australia, barring a 2-week football trip to New Zealand in 1977, I had never heard of Gallipoli Memorial Day until this year.
But it does seem rather weird timing that on Australian national news media outlets the news of the cancellation of the ANZAC Day service at Gallipoli is being announced on March 18th, which just happens to be Gallipoli Memorial Day.
Gallipoli Memorial Day commemorates the naval operation in the Dardanelles Campaign, carried out by the Turks during the First World War.
That jibe at Collingwood above is an insider AFL half-joke, because there are only two teams that play in the ANZAC game, the Magpies and the Bombers, and with me being a Brisbane Lions club member, I, like most of Australian Rules fans in Australia usually go for whichever team is playing Collingwood on the day, unless it would be in the Lions' interest for Collingwood to win that day.
I'm not even going to tempt fate by asking if this year can get any worse, as it looks like this is just the beginning of a RATShit year for Australia and the world in general.
UPDATE: March 19th, 2020
I actually think this is a nice idea, but what are those headlines trying to tell us?-)
Calls for Australians to stand at the end of their driveways with a candle at dawn on Anzac Day after all services were cancelled due to coronavirus
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