As soon as the karanga began, the crowd filling Anzac Cove for Gallipoli commemorations hushed completely.
It was a raw, keening karanga from a woman who had just been told three of her colleagues had died a long way away, back at home.
The crowd listened, entranced.
When a group of Turkish men began to talk at one point they were angrily hushed.
The crowd did not know of the deaths at that point.
Just before, at 5am, someone had moved to the darkened podium to lower the New Zealand flag to half mast.
It happened quietly, almost unnoticed.
It was the first sign for the 6000 gathered there that something was amiss.
The news of the three men killed in the helicopter crash in New Zealand had been broken to the 130 defence force staff only a few hours earlier, after they had arrived at the Anzac Cove site.
They walked around and waited for the service, faces drawn, visibly distressed.
Australia's Governor-General Quentin Bryce made a small reference to a loss in New Zealand but it was Prime Minister John Key who told them what had happened to the victims on the way to an Anzac Day service on the other side of the world.
The almost festive atmosphere that led up to that moment disappeared.
The crowd had arrived early for the ceremony, the first in the gates at 5pm the night before.
A few had tents, while the rest made do with sleeping bags.
At the front, the crowd split, almost by accident, into a New Zealand side and an Australian side, marked by flags and colours.
Vendors sold kebabs and coffee.
It almost seemed a typical Anzac Cove ceremony.
But, Mr Key said the deaths in New Zealand that day were a stark reminder of the sacrifices made at Gallipoli in 1915.
