Havelock North's Anzac Day commemoration hailed as 'best ever'

Part of the crowd at the Havelock North Anzac Day commemoration. Photo / Paul Taylor

Havelock North's remembrance for those who fought in the wars seems to have gone a full circle from near abandonment three years ago and some criticism last year to yesterday's sun-bathed commemoration which veteran Anzac Day parade regulars reckoned was "the best-ever".

Responding to concerns that it was "fading away", to use one woman's words, the community pitched in on a wide scale for an hour-long cenotaph gathering of an estimated 3000 people. There was barely a spare copy of the Terry Longley and Sons service sheet, which had a print run of 2500.

Among them was MC and veteran broadcaster Wayne Mowat, now retired to Havelock North. Mowat's 40 years in radio included a documentary series based on his 2007 visit to the 90th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium.

As the crowd dispersed, it was he who fielded most of the compliments, but just as quickly he would flick it on to such people as Van Howard, who would in turn include the whole community, from the RSA to stalwart Havelock North High School staff member Glenys Sparling-Fenton.

Organisers strove to meet the modern challenges of Anzac Day — no survivors from
the 1914-1918 war and very few from the 1939-1945 war, but a growing number of young people thirsting to pay their respects to the past family who fought for their country, many never to return.

"We're delighted," Howard said. "We're new to this, but everyone said yes."

Among them was local writer and musician Wynn Drabble, who, probably unintentionally, tended to steal the show as he grabbed the six-string and in full voice delivered Scottish folk singer Eric Bogle's And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.

It's a near-seven minutes of emotion like no other, which Drabble describes as becoming something of an Anzac anthem, despite having been written much more contemporarily by the Australia-based Bogle in 1971.

But there were others, just as notably the Deco Bay Brass Band and the Havelock North High School choir leading in Blue Smoke, the ground-breaking song written "in my head" by Ruru Karaitiana, of Dannevirke, as he sailed to war with the 28th Maori Battalion in 1940.

Nine years later it would become the first composition-to-release record in New Zealand, selling 20,000 copies and sitting for six weeks at No 1 on the New Zealand Hit Parade.

The end was as symbolic, the Havelock North HS boys performing the iconic Ngati Kahungunu haka Tika Tonu, as pertinent now as it was a century ago, challenging people to "look inside" themselves to resolve their problems.

Even the guest speaker was different.

Margaret Harman, of Hastings, recalled her days as a member of the New Zealand Civilian Surgical Team in Qui Nhon Hospital in Vietnam for a few months of the Vietnam War— starting with the adventurous approach to deciding to enrol in 1967 to her return on the last flight into Wellington Airport before it was closed by the Wahine day storm in April the next year.

Before telling of her days tending the wounded and ailing with some of the most minimal of resources — at one stage, a knife, fork and spoon — she said: "I had no idea of what I was going to. I thought it was about the front, and rules of engagement."

In 2015, Havelock North put together a commemoration at the 11th hour, after the Hastings District Council opted for a district-wide centenary commemoration.

Yesterday, Van Howard said organisers wanted yesterday's commemoration family friendly. "And we wanted to make it about [all] the conflicts," he said.