Madang prepares for memorial service

By DINNIEROSE RAIKO
and  ZEBEDEE GIAME
DWU Journalism Students
A MARCH will begin at Bates Oval in Madang at 5am tomorrow and proceed along Coastwatchers Avenue to the province’s most popular landmark – the Coastwatchers Memorial Lighthouse.
There the traditional ecumenical dawn service will be held to commemorate ANZAC day followed by a gunfire breakfast at 6.30am.
That is to mark the morning meals the servicemen usually ate during the war.
Madang was one location where coast watching was effective. So it came to be the home of the Coastwatchers Memorial Lighthouse.
It is nationally known as the Kalibobo lighthouse – a working lighthouse maintained by the local authorities.
The coast watching organisation, created and administered by the Royal Australian Navy, operated in the islands north and northeast of Australia from the earliest days of World War II in the Pacific.
Civilians and military personnel served the organisation with extreme risks to themselves and the native Papua New Guineans who assisted them.
The helpers have come to be known famously as the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.
ANZAC Day is time when the people of Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea remember those who had fallen for the sake of peace, freedom and the unity of the Pacific region.
ANZAC is an organisation that was created by the Australian and New Zealand armies.
It is aimed at strengthening the bond between the two neighbors when defence personnel left their countries to help their other ally –the United States of America – to fight in the first world war.
The Corp was created on the  April 25, 1914.
It is a day that specially remembers those brave Papua New Guineans who died in the war.
Many Papua New Guinean lives and properties were destroyed during the war.
Apart from the allies stopping the Japanese from moving south into Australia, they prevented the country from becoming a part of the Japanese imperial empire.