As a child in western Victoria, Anzac Day was either the last day of a glorious autumn or the first day of a miserable winter when the winds roared, the drizzly rain never stopped and even puddles froze.

Whatever the weather it was never a happy day. Despite decades of Anzac-hype, that heaviness has now returned.

A small group of ex-servicemen would gather outside the Penshurst RSL hall until the last post sounded, little kids were taken home giggling about the holey underwear of the kilt-wearing bugler, and the real business of adult remembering could begin.

Two decades after the end of the second world war, memories were still fresh for those who had served in Europe, north Africa, PNG, south-east Asia or been incarcerated in Japanese PoW camps.

By the mid-1960s a new threat was looming for the young men of the rich farming district, the sons of the Gunditjmara, descendants of squatters, farmers and soldier settlers.

The ballot that randomly selected conscripts for the American war in Vietnam, which Australia had signed up for, induced fear and anxiety. Even in rural Victoria, where the then local MP, Malcolm Fraser, was minister for the army, not everyone was convinced about the merits of taking sides in a regional civil war.

We now live in a very different world. The Penshurst RSL is on the state heritage database; its cannon and flagpole relocated from the Botanic gardens.

But, for the first time in my life, this Anzac Day pulses with........

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