Anglesea veteran hopes to boost sub-branch membership

ANZAC Day is emotional for Anglesea veteran Bill Shaw.

The Anglesea RSL sub-branch committee member, who served the Royal Australian Navy for a decade, will attend the town’s dawn reflection at the memorial in Cameron Park on Friday.

He will be with his wife Jeanette before joining a march from Anglesea Memorial Hall to the cenotaph for a commemorative service.

While Shaw remembers his own experiences, the many mates made and those lost to the passage of time, his reflections turn to those who made ultimate sacrifices in conflicts before and since, and to those who were left behind.

“It’s very emotional, a time to reflect on Australia as a nation and those people who served and sacrificed,” he said.

“First World War, Second World War, Vietnam, Borneo and more recent conflicts – it’s a time to remember them and especially their families – their loved ones didn’t come back.”

Shaw joined the navy at age 17 in 1972 and served aboard HMAS Anzac, Swan, Brisbane, Hobart, Stalwart, Cerberus, Canberra, Harman and Lonsdale.

Deployments took him around Australia and South-East Asia and profoundly shaped him.

“It gave me purpose knowing that working with the navy helped to protect Australia,” he said.

“It gave me values like loyalty and integrity, you have to have those to be in the forces, and then it just made me really proud to be an Australian.”

Shaw estimates up to 1,000 people might attend Anglesea RSL Anzac Day ceremonial and social activities across the day, but one of his aims is boosting year-round membership of the sub-branch, recruiting younger veterans as well as first responders.

“I’m 70 this year, and you’ve got young people just out of the forces in their late 20s and 30s,” he said.

“We’d like to get these young people in and run their own programs and gradually they will come up through the ranks.

“I’m active in the RSL because I believe it’s a good organisation, a non-profit organisation. We just want to help people.”