A day to remind us who we are

Anzac Day is perhaps the most important day of the year to many of us. My point is that it has a huge importance to all of us, to our culture and to our society.
It is most certainly not about glorifying war. Very few servicemen would ever wish to do that.
It reminds us of who we are. It reminds us of the sort of people we were, and, hopefully still are.
It involves countless volunteers working in the background – we are a nation of volunteers and Anzac Day reminds us all of that happy fact.
The day reminds us of duty, of courage, of the need to look out for each other and care for each others. It reminds us to handle adversity with courage, and with humour, some of it very black humour. I remember when Bluey Tregear was killed I said to someone that "That bugger owed me thirty nine dollars – I've done my money." You learn to do your mourning later, when you have disengaged from the enemy and returned "inside the wire" at Nui Dat. Bluey would have understood that.
I remember that in the 4th intake of National Servicemen in Melbourne two thirds were volunteers, not conscripts. I was there, and I checked the figures. History does not seem to have recorded the number of young Victorian men who volunteered, knowing there was a war in progress and that we were involved. Some of the great truths were not picked up because there was a better story in those who protested. "History" is not always the whole truth.
That was on April 20, 1966, the day I became 3788690 Recruit Wells, J.C. One thing led to another and I found myself in a war zone, as Gunner Wells, J.C., still with that number. It now forms the basis of all my passwords and PINs because it is the one number I can never forget. If you're a scammer and reading this, go for your life.
However, this story is not about me.
In Vietnam I met more volunteers, some of them civilians. I remember us surrounding a suspect village in the small hours, watching our men searching it house by house as the daylight grew. It was a fully tactical situation and I stood by my radio, able with a few words to rain artillery down upon the enemy. 'Charlie' was not there.
When we cleared the village and headed north I came across a Salvation Army bloke on the side of the road with a Landrover and trailer, offering us a hot coffee or a cup of tea. He was alone. Unarmed, in 'Indian' country. He was a true volunteer and I have donated to the Salvos ever since.
But Anzac Day is not about the spectacular things, though some of us remember them with pride and spend the afternoon telling lies and tall stories while drinking – in some cases more than we should. We understand each other. If you've ever pulled on the boots, you are in the club. It is the biggest club in Australia, but you cannot buy a membership.
The volunteering goes deeper into our culture than that. Think of all the people who give their time to helping others – in schools, in hospitals, in libraries, throughout the normal Australian world.
Let me use the Dandenong Cranbourne RSL as just one example of something that happens right across this lucky country.
Sales of Anzac badges, and the red poppies on Remembrance Day, are sold across Victoria by thousands of – yes, you guessed it – volunteers. Harmony Village in Dandenong had quite a few 'RSL' ladies, and they came over, year after year, to fill the trays for the sellers, a very big task for an RSL that serves 62 schools and which has sellers throughout the community, for many days leading up to the big one.
Dandenong had a team of women who went into Melbourne in the small hours, set up tables and chairs, and sometimes umbrellas, learned where the nearest available toilets were and sniffed out a coffee supply. They were proud of their efforts and they knew that every cent went into veteran welfare by way of a Patriotic Fund, a Victorian initiative that ensures the money stays sacred to that purpose.
You will have seen similar volunteers in your own towns. This is a national celebration of who we are, and when the bugle blows a single G at 11am it is happening in every town with an RSL right across the Eastern Australian time zone, On or about the hundredth anniversary of Anzac Day (my memory is letting me down here) the ladies of the Presbyterian Church in Cranbourne produced a huge and intricate quilt showing the scene of the landing at Suvla Bay. There were hundreds of hours of work in it. Volunteer hours.
The ladies who'd retired into Harmony Village in Dandenong produced a long runner covered with handmade poppies, to use at Dandenong's Pillars of Freedom every ANZAC and Remembrance day. Again, countless hours of knitting poppies and sewing them on. Volunteer hours.
They knew the importance of the day to our understanding of who had come before us and the sacrifices so many had made.
The Dandenong RSL volunteers include the ladies who make up the hampers, very generous hampers, for our Easter raffles, and the ladies who man their selling spot for weeks beforehand. Some of them formed a knitting club which supplies beautiful handmade blankets to people who need them. Others run raffles in the bars to raise welfare funds, run the laugh-a-minute Swindler's Cup on Melbourne Cup Day.
Some run the football tipping, or the horse-tipping club. There are groups running the darts competition, the bowls, the golf, groups that bring us all together, talking, laughing, getting out of the house. They are all volunteers, and I could go on listing the things they do - helping with funerals, visiting folk in hospital. They get no medals. Their names are not on rolls of honour. They just get the job done, knowing what is the right thing.
The day at Dandenong includes the active participation of many ethnic groups who see themselves as the proud Australians they are now.
None of this is limited to the Dandenong RSL, of course
I am hoping that all of you who read this will see how good is the work of the RSL right across the country, and that you will realise that it is almost the guardian of the great qualities that make this the lucky country. Those qualities are perhaps the most important part of the day.
I am hoping, too, that you will see in this some of the qualities that really do make this the lucky country, and that you will see those values in your own life.
Anzac Day is as much a celebration of who we have become, as it is of who we were.