Anzac Day

Thursday was Anzac Day, and we had the day off work. Anzac stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps, and Anzac Day is kind of like our Memorial Day. It's on April 25th each year because it marks the day that Australian and New Zealand forces landed on Gallipoli in World War I. The landing was a disaster and huge number of people were killed. So the day was originally to commemorate that event, but now it honors all servicemen and women.

Anzac Day is a pretty big deal here. The first memorial service in Sydney started at 4:30 AM to mark the time of the Gallipoli landing. And the services continued on from there for the rest of the day.

I didn't make it out to the dawn service or the service that started at 8:30. But I did go out for a march and service in the afternoon.

The march was huge. It went on for about 3 hours. Different veteran groups marched together, and older veterans rode in jeeps.

After the parade, I walked up to the Anzac Memorial at Hyde Park. There were a lot of people there too!

I was really moved by how many people were out for the services. Twenty thousand people were at the dawn service - that's a lot of people who got up early to go to a service. I have no idea how many thousands were at the parade, but it was A LOT. Especially considering that the parade wasn't really a jovial event, like the Chinese New Year parade or the sports parades. People stood and clapped as each group went by; it was a very reverent event.

In true Australian fashion though, people managed to merge the reverence of the day with good times. As soon as the parade was over, the pubs started getting full. Like overflowingly full.

One of the pub-related traditions of Memorial Day is a game called Two-Up. Two-up is a gambling game that's illegal in Australia except for on Anzac Day. The basic premise is that you bet on whether two pennies tossed in the air will land on both heads or both tails. That's it. You can see how it might become more entertaining after a few beers. =)

I took a video outside a bar of a two-up game in progress. The paddle the guy is holding is called a kip and that's what's used to toss the pennies up. The rest of the game is pretty simple - there's some time spent explaining....something, and then about 10 seconds of excitement when the pennies land and people lose or get some money. Weird game, but it's played in bars all over the country with enthusiasm on Anzac Day!

We gave a nod to Anzac Day at home, too. I made Anzac biscuits, which are like oatmeal cookies but denser. During the war, people on the homefront would send them to soldiers because they keep really well (the cookies, that is). They were tasty!

Anzac biscuits use an ingredient called golden syrup. It seems like kind of a cross between honey, molasses, and corn syrup. I bought a bottle of it so I could make the cookies - now I need to find another purpose for it!

Here's the cookie recipe I used:

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
1⁄2 cup coconut
125 g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon water
1⁄2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method

Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar, rolled oats and coconut.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the golden syrup and water.
Stir the bicarbonate of soda into the liquid mixture.
Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Place walnut-sized balls of mixture on a greased tray and bake at 175°C for 15-20 
minutes.

A friend from work brought Anzac biscuits into work on Friday.  Her grandmother made them for her grandfather during the war, so she makes them from a hand-written recipe passed down in the family. Mine tasted pretty similar to hers, so I count my first attempt at Anzac biscuits as a success!

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