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Flypast to honour Anzacs

23 April 2015

AN RAAF Hornet flies over the Top End. Three of the jets will fly over Jabiru, Gunbalanya, Minjilang and Warruwi on Anzac Day in a special event to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli landings.  AN RAAF Hornet flies over the Top End. Three of the jets will fly over Jabiru, Gunbalanya, Minjilang and Warruwi on Anzac Day in a special event to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. 

WEST Arnhem Regional Council will mark the centenary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli with a Centenary March in Jabiru and RAAF flypasts over four communities.

In a special event organised by the Council and the Australian Defence Force, three RAAF F/A-18 Hornets will fly low and fast over Anzac Day services in Jabiru, Gunbalanya, Minjilang and Warruwi from 8.30am Saturday, 25 April 2015.

In Jabiru, the Council is hosting a Centenary March from the Town Plaza to Lake Jabiru Park, leaving at 7.15am. Residents and visitors are invited to join the 8th/12th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery catafalque party, returned servicemen and women, family and friends, Police and Emergency Services officers, Councillors, Jabiru Area School Captains, teachers, students and special guests on the march. Cr Ralph Blyth will be Master of Ceremonies at the Dawn Service to be held from 6am at Jabiru Town Plaza.

Breakfast at the park, generously provided by Spotless, will be from 7.30am, while Buslink will provide a courtesy return bus from the park after the flypast. For those who cannot join in the march, the parking area at the park can be accessed by vehicles from Calvert Crescent.

Council Services Manager Kupa Teao says Warruwi will hold a Dawn Parade, with breakfast from 8am at the HACC building opposite the community store, to give participants a great vantage point for the RAAF Hornet flypast.

Minjilang will hold a community breakfast from 8am outside the Council office. Acting Council Services Manager in Minjilang David Shoobridge is just one of many West Arnhem residents with a strong connection to the Digger tradition. His father was part of the second landing at Gallipoli, as a stretcher bearer in the Fifth Transport Brigade.

“He was wounded and returned to Australia, where he was a dairy farmer in Tasmania,” Mr Shoobridge told The Wire. “When the Second World War came around, he applied again - but they looked at his age and wouldn’t let him in!”