ANZAC Day

The next big event was Rosie's first public outing with the MLC Flockhart Band marching in the ANZAC day parade which is huge in Melbourne. We took her to meet her bandmates near the cathedral opposite Flinders Station at about 8:30. Other bands were starting to get their acts together around there too.



The parade was to start at 9:00 and the MLC girls were due to march off from the cathedral at 9:35. We found a great spot on Princes Bridge near the beginning of the parade where Sophie could have a front row view. It wasn't too long a wait before the Victorian Police got the ball rolling with 2 guys on horses followed by the Police Band and a row of officials including our controversial but popular Chinese Mayor, John So, (fondly advertised around town as "John So, he's my bro").





Then the real part of the parade started with the oldest wars and soldiers commemorated first. Quite early on in the piece there was a large group of Kiwis who received tumultuous applause from the crowd. One poignant episode was the march-past of a lone girl carrying the banner for the "Sydney" a ship whose wreck was just found a couple of months ago. She was followed by no marchers which made the point quite graphically that the ship went down with the loss of all several hundred lives. Several and varied bands were interspersed between the marching diggers.



Finally the great moment arrived and the MLC band came into view. We found Rosie, watched them march past our spot and then followed them down St Kilda Rd towards the Shrine of Remembrance. She did brilliantly marching all that way while playing. They passed in front of all the assembled VIPs turned left in front of the Shrine and then peeled off to be rescued by their following entourages. Rosie was only too pleased to give her horn to Peter and strip off her jumper and blazer for the walk back. It had turned into a very warm day and she was sweating profusely. The parade still had a couple more hours to run but we headed for Trampoline at Southbank for a well-deserved icecream reward.


After the parade we went to Russell and Barb's place for a barbie with Margaret and her brother, Garry, who was visiting for the weekend from Sydney. It was nice to meet Russell's aunt, Ruth, who is the widow of Russell's dad's brother. Sophie decorated the pav and presented the giant ANZAC cookies she had made for the occasion.

My social ANZAC weekend continued on the Sunday with a brunch reunion of the Mt Buller folks at the home of plastic surgeon/violinist/violist, Miklos Pohl, a proud Hungarian (the guy in the yellow shirt). He lives not far from Will in East Melbourne in a converted old building of some sort in a 2-bedroom apartment designed (Peter since told me) by some internationally renowned guy. I thought it was pretty nice at the time.


Jessye's been doing the odd bit of practice on her drums at home and she doesn't sound too bad at all. She doesn't do enough to be annoying which is lucky.