Inner West hosts Anzac Day Memorial Services
Tuesday 11 April, 2017
Inner West Council and Balmain-Rozelle RSL will hold an ANZAC Day Memorial Dawn Service at Balmain’s Loyalty Square from 6am on Tuesday 25 April.
The Balmain Dawn Service has proved extremely popular since first held in 2014 with crowds lining Darling Street leading up to the Loyalty Square monument that is the centre of the service.
This Balmain Dawn Service also coincides with the Centenary of Anzac (2014 to 2018) being commemorated across the nation and overseas, marking 100 years since our involvement in the First World War.
The Anzac Centenary honours the service and sacrifice of ANZACs and Australian servicemen and women who have defended Australia in wars throughout a century of service.
Unveiled on 23 April 1916 just before the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, the Loyalty Square monument is one of the oldest memorials to World War 1 soldiers.
The memorial drinking fountain features the words ‘Peace, Honour, Empire, Liberty’.
It records the names of 38 Balmain men who lost their lives at Gallipoli and was designed by a soldier from Balmain.
At the outbreak of World War I, nearly all of the local men eligible to enlist did so.
Balmain at the time was a working class suburb. Many of the men who enlisted were used to hard physical work at the local dockyards.
Close to 5,000 men and women from the suburbs of Annandale, Balmain, Birchgrove, Leichhardt, Lilyfield and Rozelle enlisted their services for the First World War.
Around 4,500 enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force – the AIF – with a further 500 in the Royal Australian Air Force and Navy, as well as those who served as nurses and medical staff.
In Ashfield, the RSL Sub Branch in conjunction with Inner West Council, will hold the annual ANZAC Sunday Memorial Service at the Memorial Obelisk at Ashfield Park on Sunday 23 April from 9.30am to 10.15am.
And in Petersham, Petersham RSL will hold their ANZAC Day Dawn Service in Council’s Petersham Town Hall from 5.40am.