ANZAC Day is coming up this Friday, April 25. This is the day that Australia pauses to remember both the first ANZAC Day, when Australian and New Zealand forces landed in Gallipoli, and all of Australia’s military involvement in international conflict.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about two new books coming out in time for ANZAC Day, but wanted to write about it again because this particular ANZAC Day is a special one for my family. Murphlet 3, you see, is overseas at present, on the Western Australian Premier’s ANZAC Student Tour. Along with eleven other high school students and their supervisors, he is touring the battle fields of France and Belgium, attending services and generally being steeped in this important part of Australian history. On the day itself he’ll be attending a big dawn service at Villiers-Bretoneaux along with about six thousand others, and laying a wreath alongside the Western Australian Premier.

So, yes, it’s an exciting time for Murphlet 3, and an experience he’ll never forget. To win a place on the trip, he had to firstly research the involvement of Western Australians in the creation of the ANZAC legend and present his findings as a six minute speech. This wasn’t an easy task, but it was a really rewarding one both for him and for the whole family. Both my beloved and myself knew something about our respective families being involved in both of the World Wars, but it was as Murphlet 3 went through this process that we began digging and discussing this history. We are now, as a family, much more aware of the role our forebears played – from both sides of the family, Murphlet 3 had one Great-Great Grandfather, three Great Grandfathers and several great uncles serve during one or both of the World Wars. Some of the sites he’ll be visiting are the very places those relatives fought.

The lesson for me in all this is an awareness of how important it is to ask questions of living relatives about family history, so that that history is not lost. As a writer, I should have already been aware of the importance of asking and recording some of this history, but with much of it not discussed, had lived in ignorance. I know now, and this ANZAC Day as I climb the hill behind my home to attend the local dawn service, I’ll be just that little more aware of the day’s significance.