Governor-General's Dawn Service Address at Anzac Cove

25 April 2002

In his address to the Dawn Service at Anzac Cove this morning, Governor-General Peter Hollingworth spoke of the lessons to be learned from the relationships formed between Anzac soldiers and their Turkish assailants during the Gallipoli campaign.

Speaking this morning to a crowd of thousands of Australians gathered on the Gallipoli Peninsula with representatives of other nations, Dr Hollingworth said that the Anzac story, at one level, was one of reconciliation and of identifying in other peoples qualities which embodied our common humanity.

On the first Anzac Day following September 11, Dr Hollingworth said that our remembrance of past loss carried a strong association to the present, "with the horror that human beings can so easily lose their sense of common humanity, so easily conjure the 'other' into a monster whose life, and death, are somehow worth less".

Dr Hollingworth said that despite the passing of time since 25 April 1915, increasing numbers of Australians and New Zealanders were making the "pilgrimage" to Gallipoli to "honour those men who have no graves and yet whose names live forever more".

"We come both with a sense of the past and a commitment to the future. To learn from this laden silence, this haunting, whispering landscape that we have all imagined from the other side of the world, so great an impression has it etched on our nations' identities."

Dr Hollingworth said that Australians who inherit their legend must "honour the Anzacs by cherishing their fresh, young insight, their understanding of human values, their sense of mateship and the capacity, against great odds, to find and engage such values in others."

Following his address at the Dawn Service, the Governor-General and Mrs Hollingworth attended a number of other Anzac Day commemorative services, including the Australian Service at Lone Pine, the International Service, the Turkish National Service and the New Zealand National service.