General News
30 April, 2026
Quiet Anzac morning reflections
ANZAC Day was marked in Dimboola on Saturday under clear skies and calm weather from before dawn by a respectful crowd at the War Memorial, with more commemorations following later in the morning, tied together by a theme of honouring the nurses who risked being near war zones to tend to the wounded.
Around 6am, the mostly-dark Dimboola Memorial Secondary College grounds saw locals quietly arrive and gather just as the stars began to fade, with the 6.15am service led by local RSL president, Charles Rees.
“Welcome this morning, this Anzac Day, 2026,” he said.
“Anzac Day at the landing of Gallipoli was on a Sunday – the morning was nothing like this.
“The cloud and the mist, and the cold morning was uncomfortable.”
Quoting from Laurence Binyon’s famous poem ‘For the Fallen’, published in 1914, Mr Rees read the third stanza:
“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
“Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
“They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
“They fell with their faces to the foe.”
However, he said the reality of Gallipoli was not poetic, but “an absolute catastrophe” with “bodies everywhere” and something the commanders hadn’t prepared for, this unreadiness extending to the nurses on the nearby hospital ship.
“(They were) absolutely horrified at what they were witnessing,” Mr Rees said.
“Today we will honour some of these nurses.”
Mr Rees spoke of the significant challenges faced by those who served to heal in war, such as the lack of sanitation, pests, and the development of physiotherapy for rehabilitation.
“We take our hats off to them – we salute them today,” he said.
The sombre service was followed by a welcome gunfire breakfast, with a crowd reconvening at 8.20am at the school gates to march up for laying wreaths at the memorial.
At 9am, the group moved to the Assembly Hall, with the Dimboola-Nhill Band playing a selection of hymns and the national anthem between multiple readings and speeches, including the main address by Dimboola RSL secretary/treasurer, Rhonda Huf.
“Today, I'd like to share the story of women who fought in World War 2 – and yes, I mean fought,” she said.
“They fought just as surely as the sailor in his ship, the soldier with his rifle and tank, and the airman in the sky.
“For these women, it was a different kind of war. They fought against anything that threatened to take life away.
“They were nurses.”
Mrs Huf especially highlighted the lives of two nurses: Dimboola-born Matron Paschke, who served in Malaya (as it was then known) in 1941, and Vivian Bullwinkel, who both ended up on an evacuating ship out of Singapore in February 1942.
But the SS Vyner Brooke was bombed, and the life raft Paschke was on did not make it to land; Mrs Huf then spoke about the experiences of Bullwinkel, surviving a massacre of nurses, being a prisoner of the Japanese, her testimony in a war crimes tribunal and her subsequent posting as Matron at the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in Melbourne.
She paid tribute to her as an example of the sacrifices made that are honoured on Anzac Day.
“Let us not only remember the nurses who have died during wartime, but also the ones who returned home safely, because what they had endured would never have left their thoughts for their lifetime.”
The recognitions ended on a high note later at morning tea at the RSL Hall, with John and Leanne Combrink presenting a spectacular ‘Lest We Forget’ artwork to the RSL.