April 26, 2024
Steam shrouds Ohinemutu Anzac ritual
Rising steam and the rising sun make for a dramatic Anzac Day dawn service at Ohinemutu, and Rotorua broadcaster Kingi Biddle says this year didn’t disappoint.
The service always draws a couple of thousand people, with the crowd stretching from the meeting house to Muru Ika, the soldier’s urupa on the shores of Lake Rotorua where the service is held among the upraised graves.
This year the march on by veterans was led by 99-year-old Sir Robert Bom Gillies, the last remaining member of 28 Maori Battalion.
They’re retracing the route taken by battalion members when they returned in 1945.
“The lake is just behind us and the sun is just rising as the sound pierces the taiao and that is of course Reveille and later on The Last Post,” Mr Biddle says.
This year the waiata were carried by the choir of Hato Paora