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Place of honour
for women
SYDNEY: Women will be
prominent at Anzac Day
marches in Australia today.
Instead of being a minor aspect
of the marches, as in previous
years, they will have a special
place to honour the 40th an
niversary this year of Australian
wartime women's services.
Of the 25,000 expected at the
Sydney march, a group of 1,200
women will lead all contingents
along the five-kilometre route
from the Cenotaph in Martin
Place at 9am to Hyde Park.
Organiser June Stone said
some had travelled from New
Zealand and the US to be in the
march. One woman had come
from Fiji.
The women will be led by the
first director of the Women's
Australian Auxiliary Air Force,
Group Officer Clare Stevenson.
During the dawn service at
4.30 at the Cenotaph the first
woman officer to serve during
World War II, Mrs Gwen
Caldwell (former Wing Com
mander Starke), will give the
address.
Prayers will be led by Lieuten
ant-Colonel Elma Curtis, of the
Salvation Army, who was a cap
tain attached to the WAAAF
during World War H.
Women will also have the
largest of the dozens of reunions
planned for after the march.
They have hired the main hall at
Sydney Town Hall and 1,200
have been booked in.
A new feature of the march is
a flypast by a Catalina flying
boat which was used during the
war in the Pacific. It is due to fly
over George Street when the
RAAF contingent 'is moving -
between 11.15am and 11.30am.
MELBOURNE: About
16,000 people are expected to
take part in Melbourne's Anzac
Day parade.
The chief marshal of the
march, Brigadier. K. V. Rossi,
said about 300 World War I
veterans were expected to take
part.
The ceremonies would begin
with a dawn standing-to at the
Shrine of Remembrance at 5.45.
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