Covid-19 protocols will not stop Amberley RSA president James Drewery and his extended family from marking Anzac Day.
Mr Drewery and his family will gather in their garden for a 6am Dawn Service this Saturday.
Taking centre-stage will be a flag pole, with a plaque at its foot etched with: ‘‘In remembrance of those who gave their tomorrows, so we have our todays.
The debt is timeless.’’
He will be joined by his daughter Juliet van den Heuval, his son-in-law John, and grandchildren Noah, aged 11, and Mila, 6.
John, who is an ex regular soldier and a member of the RSA, will be flag marshal, and the children will lay wreaths they have made at the foot of the flag pole, while a candle burns in the shelter of a bottle.
Recordings of the Last Post and Reveille will ring out as dawn breaks across North Canterbury.
‘‘We decided to have our own thing in our bubble, and it may perhaps trigger other smaller gatherings,’’ Mr Drewery says.
He says Broomfield School children are making their own wreaths also, with many of them planning to lay them in remembrance of the fallen at their homes.
Okuku plans
Further inland, a North Canterbury essential services worker is also planning an alternative commemoration.
Okuku’s Theresa Rosanowski, a Rangiora Health Hub midwife, plans to erect life-sized, black wooden silhouettes of World War 1 soldiers on Birch Hill Rd near the Okuku River bridge this week.
The silhouettes were made for free last year by Rangiora’s Brent Johnson Joinery for the Rangiora Pony Club’s Anzac Day jump at the club’s one-day event in June.
Theresa has also obtained colouring- in templates from New Zealand’s National Army Museum which can be downloaded from the Rangiora Pony Club’s Facebook page, or the North Canterbury News website.
Theresa hopes children and adults will mark Anzac Day by using the templates to create colourful images for display in the windows of their homes this Saturday.
