Ciara, Charlotte, Rebecca and I all woke up early and managed to get ourselves together in order to check out before 9.30am, so we could meet the others (Catherine and Roxanne) in reception for our wander into town. Today was Anzac Day – the Aussie/NZ equivalent of Remembrance Sunday and we wanted to go to the parade.
Somehow, despite lots of chatting, the plan worked and soon we were on our way. The only thing was, we didn’t know where the parade was going to be and also we hadn’t seen the war memorial on our travels about the town, so we were not sure where to go. We got a clue when we saw a bunch of teenagers (about 14-18 years old) who looked like cadets; they were wearing a military style uniform and were marching along the main road (badly – hardly in unison with one another!) towards the park, so we followed them as we figured they must be going the right way! They stopped and started doing some drills, so we found a bench by the lake and sat chatting for a while, then noticed that lots of people in uniform were gathering around us. We all leapt about 10 feet in the air when suddenly we were blasted away by the deafening wailing of about 15 people playing the bagpipes right behind us!
At 10.30, the parade seemed to be coming together, so we moved to watch it begin. The bagpipe players lead the way and groups of military, old and new, followed along behind and then right at the back, about 50 girls – Pippins, Brownies, Guides, Rangers and their Leaders. Once they had passed us, we followed and as they proceeded along the main street, it occurred to me that until now, I had never been to a Remembrance Parade without being in the parade myself! The walk itself was very short and we couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed the cenotaph before as it was right next to the information centre on the main street.
We gathered amongst the large congregation of people for the service and were shocked to hear what the vicar said as he opened the proceedings – this morning in Wellington, a military helicopter involved in the dawn Anzac service had crashed, killing three of the four servicemen inside – what a tragic irony. You could feel the disbelief emanating from the crowd – obviously, like us, they had not heard the news beforehand either. This made the service even more moving, as reference was made several times to this recent tragedy, as well as to the tragedy of such horrific loss all those decades ago.
As sombre and occasion as it was, one thing really made Rebecca and I laugh – the mayor explained that there had been a change in the law recently that meant that as well as the NZ national anthem, the Australian national anthem was also to be sung, as a mark of remembering their losses too. He then went on to explain that unfortunately the law had changed just after the final arrangements had been made for this particular service and so as a result it was not possible to include the Aussie national anthem into the proceedings, but instead there would be a fly-by of an Australian plane (an old one; I think it must have been fitting with those from the period), this was also printed in the order of service. We stood and waited a couple of minutes and then the plane flew overhead, most unceremoniously (if you didn’t know it was a special fly-by, you would easily have thought it was just a little plane going past!). The reason we found this funny was that it seemed to us that it would have been far more complicated (and expensive!) arranging a fly-by of an old Aussie plane, to pass a particular place at a precise moment, than it would have been to just get the band on the stage to play a few bars from the Aussie national anthem for people to listen to – it just made no sense at all! We know very well how the Kiwis seem to dislike the Ausiies, so clearly they just did not want to sing or listen to their anthem.
After the service ended and the wreaths had been laid at the memorial, people started dispersing. I decided to go and chat to a couple of the Guide Leaders I had spotted. I was slightly surprised to find out that they were both Brits who moved to NZ within the last year! We spoke briefly before they had to go and deal with their girls, but I did manage to discover that the absence of any Scouts was for good reason – there was a large District service going on, so the Taupo Scouts had gone off to that.
Back at the hostel, I sat and chatted with the girls and then at 12.30 the bus arrived – it confused us immensely as it was not a Stray bus; it turned out that they had had to hire a replacement bus as it had broken down! I think the change of bus confused everyone as people seemed reluctant to get on – it was not the usual bright orange bus, after all! We said a fond farewell to Catherine, Charlotte and Roxanne and then jumped on board.
Our driver was Emily (aka Keifer) and the five hour journey back to Auckland was relatively uninteresting – I just sat and chatted to Barry, then at our stop I bought a bottle of L&P (an odd form of lemonade from the place I drove through the other day), but could not decide if I liked it or not!
On arrival in Auckland, Barry, Rebecca and Ciara all got out at Nomad’s Hostel and we arranged to meet up later on. Emily then dropped me off at my stop and I checked in once again at the K Road City Travellers. I was a little shocked to find my room mates were two stinky boys who turned out to be Scottish, so after a quick check of my email, I went and got showered and ready for my final, final, final night out with the bus gang.
When I met them down at Nomads, they had brought someone else along called Carl (he had gotten on the bus with us at Taupo, but was not an official gang member!) and we sat in the bar chatting and discussing the places we had visited over the last few weeks and what we expected would happen over the next few weeks, as we are all going separate ways. Rebecca and I got everyone drinking vodka, lemon, lime & bitters (the best drink ever) and enjoyed bopping along to some classic early 90s pop, much to Barry’s horror – he had no idea what the songs were, being young and Dutch! We then trudged to Maccas and had a late night snack, before saying goodbye and heading back to our respective hostels, having had a wonderful evening. I really have enjoyed meeting people on this Stray leg, it’s given me faith in my ability of travelling alone.
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