Vic: Organisers hope 40,000 people will go to Dawn Service

AAP General News (Australia)
04-23-2010
Vic: Organisers hope 40,000 people will go to Dawn Service

MELBOURNE, April 23 AAP - One 96-year-old veteran will be making his Anzac Day debut
on Sunday, but former British soldier Reg Dickinson would rather it came about in different
circumstances.

After being knocked off his motorised scooter and robbed of his pokies winnings on
Wednesday, Mr Dickinson was invited by Victorian Premier John Brumby to join the march
on Sunday.

The Rat of Tobruk has lived in Australia for 29 years but has never been in the Anzac
Day march and, while he says he won't be able to actually march, he's taken up the offer
to join in.

"It would make a complete change, I've never been in the parades here," he told AAP.

"I would like to go."

Mr Dickinson, who drove trucks in Italy, France and Egypt during World War II, managed
to fight off his attackers outside his nursing home in Hoppers Crossing.

A teenage girl and 29-year-old man have been charged and appeared in court on Friday.

Among the hundreds of Anzac ceremonies in towns across Victoria, the service in bushfire
ravaged Marysville will culminate with a Lone Pine sapling being planted in the town's
restored Reflective Garden.

The sapling from the iconic pine that stood on the hills above Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli
Peninsula was donated to the people of Marysville by Turkish Rotary club members who visited
earlier this year.

Members of Melbourne's Turkish community will march with veterans and citizens in Marysville.

Organisers of the Dawn Service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance are hoping for
a record crowd of more than 40,000 people.

While the number of veterans dwindles each year, public interest in Anzac Day has jumped
in the past 15 years.

Although showers are forecast, the Anzac Day Commemoration Council is confident of a big crowd.

For the first time, fewer than 100,000 World War II veterans are still alive in Australia,
with about 1200 of them expected to march in Melbourne on Sunday, says Chris Handley from
the council.

AAP gr/pmu/apm

KEYWORD: ANZAC VIC

� 2010 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.