AUSTRALIANS have been urged to show the Anzac spirit of mateship and national pride every day, and not just once a year during the veterans march in Perth.
Residents of the Perth capital gathered in record numbers to honour veterans and present day diggers, with 50,000 gathering for the dawn service at Kings Park and even more then lining the streets of the city as hundreds of veterans marched.
Modern-day digger Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Willis, whose grandfather Robert Lowson was one of the original Anzacs to land at Gallipoli in 1915, led WA's main Anzac day march on a new route and with a new focus.
Vietnam veteran, former state and federal politician and now RSL WA president Graham Edwards said in his address the best way to honour the sacrifice of servicemen and women down the years was to live by their code every day.
"Perhaps we ought to better honour our Anzacs in our daily lives with those same qualities of humour, honour, sacrifice, mateship and a fair go for all," Mr Edwards said.
"Indeed if those same qualities were practised by all of us, including our nation's political, corporate and civic leaders, then we could give surely give truth and meaning to the saying - we will remember them."
Lt Col Willis said his pride at being able to lead the march was tempered with a realisation the Anzac tradition needed work to survive.
"The world and Australia have changed," Lt Col Willis said.
"But I'm sure those challenges can be met and the RSL can deliver like it did for my grandfather's generation."
WA governor Malcolm McCusker echoed the sentiment, saying Anzac day was about more than just the landing at Gallipoli in 1915 - it was about all wars that Australia had fought in and the people who gave their lives for the cause of freedom.
"To them we owe an enormous debt. A debt that we must never forget and which we must try to pay in our daily lives," he said.
Mr McCusker also paid tribute to the Aboriginal servicemen who were only in recent times acknowledged, as well as nurses and others who helped the wounded.
Young onlooker Maggie Wormold, 17, who had travelled from Busselton to attend the march, said she felt her generation was determined to retain the memories of the sacrifices of older Australians.
"It is important we never forget what they did in the last century, and what our forces are doing today," she said.
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