By Mikayla van Loon
For the first time the Lilydale Memorial Park held an early Anzac Day service to help honour and acknowledge the lives of those who fought and died at war.
With over 600 known Office of Australian War Graves registered within the eastern region of the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (GMCT), including at Lilydale, Healesville, Emerald, Templestowe and Andersons Creek, organiser Sharyn May said it felt only right to remember them.
“We really wanted to honour the people, so our servicemen and women, who are buried within our cemeteries,” she said.
Helped along by the Lilydale RSL and historian Anthony McAleer, the twilight service on Tuesday 18 April saw members from many aspects of the community come together to commemorate the fallen.
Having last year installed thousands of hand knitted poppies in a display for Anzac Day, Ms May said this year she and the driver of the poppy making Sharon Chuck, wanted to expand that and combine it with a service.
“So local community groups, the Lilydale Rotary, Evelyn Ridge Retirement Village and Sharon Chuck and her friends have knitted over 7000 poppies. There’s some from last year but more new ones this year,” Ms May said.
In the Australian flag alone, there are 4950 poppies making up the arrangement, with the remaining spelling out the words ‘Lest We Forget’ and a flowing trail.
Taking inspiration from last year’s installation, which Ms May said was meant to show “a river running down to the lake to represent the blood of the fallen soldiers flowing down to the water.”
“This year I suppose we’ve used a similar shape, similar design but having the ‘Lest We Forget’ and the flag has just made it just that little bit more special. We’ve got plans next year to do something a little bit different again.”
As everyone gathered, the Federation Chapel filled with people donning their handmade poppies but most notably it welcomed special guests, World War II veteran Eddie Ham and Betty Richards, wife of Jack Richards who also served in the war.
“I just like to celebrate it every year and remember him and what he did,” Ms Richards said.
While now residents of the Donwood Aged Care home in Croydon, during the 1940s Mr Ham and Ms Richards were saying goodbye to loved ones.
Although not known to each other, Mr Ham and Ms Richards’ husband served in similar parts of the world during their time with the Royal Australian Air Force.
“He was in similar places to Eddie within the 457 Spitfire Squadron, located in Darwin, Morotai and Borneo,” Ms Richards said.
When Mr Richards left his hometown of Birdsville in Queensland to travel to Brisbane to sign up for the war, Ms Richards was only just 16, he was four years older at 20.
Although from a protected industry, being from a cattle station, Mr Richards still decided to sign up claiming he was a salesman. He served four years in World War II.
The pair married when Ms Richards was 18 and he was 22, spending the next two years waiting desperately for news of his safety.
“You never knew if you were going to see them again,” she said.
“And with letters, you’d wait three weeks and when you got it, you wouldn’t know if they were still alive.”
For Mr Ham the years of the war were spent fighting and escaping death, navigating unknown territories and waters.
“I was involved from 1943 to 1946 in the 22 Squadron as a navigator and wireless operator. Then we had a crash in the Philippines and my pilot was killed,” Mr Ham said.
“I was picked up by an American PT boat in the ocean and then there was no plane and no pilot so I transferred to 34 Squadron, which exists today and as far as I know, I’m the only survivor of both squadrons now.”
Mr Ham joined the Air Training Corps before he was 18 and signed up as soon as he was able, becoming an officer by the time he was 20-years-old.
As a young man, Mr Ham witnessed and experienced some terribly frightening things, surviving two near death experiences.
“We crashed into the sea, it was a violent crash. I got knocked out. I couldn’t help Dick Scott. He was four months older than me and we were both 20 at the time,” he said.
“He was a good pilot. We had some really scary things happen. We had a bomb go off under the aircraft, it put 26 holes in the aircraft…we didn’t know if we had any landing gear or any brakes but miracles do happen.
“When we got back, we had two front wheels and a back wheel.”
Noting his service as “necessary” Mr Ham said there were so many times when he “shouldn’t have come back” and “at least twice I should have died”.
Grateful to have made it back, he said if some of those miracles hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have been able to have his four children, and marry his second wife Phyllis in his 70s to enjoy another 20 years of a happy marriage.
As the sun went down over Lilydale Memorial Park, bugler Tom Steele played the last post and Lilydale RSL president Bill Dobson read the Ode.
“I really respect the idea of Anzac Day and remembering the people who have allowed us to live the way we do today,” Ms May said.
“It’s really important that we continue for future generations…it’s a way to connect the next generation to the past generation because it’s quite easily forgotten so it’s important we keep it alive.”
