Mr Lappin's old mates from the 1st Field Squadron had organised a wheelchair so he could take part in the march through the city a bit later in the morning, but he insisted on standing for the dawn. In 1971, he was thrown from an Armoured Personnel Carrier in Vietnam, permanently injuring his spine and a leg, and the business of standing in the chill morning was hard, though he didn't say it. His wife rubbed his back to give him a little relief, but he was lost in memories of crawling through claustrophobic tunnels with a single mate, searching with their hands for booby traps and mines. All around, the vast crowd hoisted a canopy of umbrellas and hunkered into the hoods of heavy coats as the sound of a single bugle floated through the mist. Here, said a voice from the loudspeakers, was the soul of Australia. Ninety-seven years after Australian and New Zealand troops splashed ashore and the sea turned crimson at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, the size of the crowd prepared to ignore the most uncomfortable April 25 Melbourne weather for years lent a truth to it. Three flags - Australian, New Zealand, Victorian - flapped at half mast and the most familiar of commemorative verses, The Ode, washed through the silence. Melbourne's lit towers across the parks to the north-west dissolved into low cloud. It was, without doubt, another Anzac dawn.

Rifle fire punctuated each verse of Abide with Me, and a young man from Trinity Grammar, Bennett Harrison, recited the words of In Flanders Fields. "We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields...

To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high." The former commanding officer of the Royal Australian Regiment in East Timor and Afghanistan, Colonel Jason Blain, urged Australians to remember not just those original Anzacs, but all those who followed them through a century of wars. His own darkest hours, he said, were those just before dawn when he thought of the young soldiers who had died and been wounded under his command, and their families. There were, he said, 3000 Australians still serving overseas, and their work was achieving much.

And he had a message for those wearied by the long years of war in Afghanistan. "Do not think of our work in Afghanistan as in vain or of no use," he said. "It is simply not true." Australians were serving in the cause of human rights and to improve the lives and grant a better future to Afghan men and women. Australia may be an island, but no nation, he said, could be an island in the face of tyranny and terror. A wreath was laid upon the stone within the shrine by Victoria's Governor, Alex Chernov - born in Lithuania, another country torn by war. Loading

The Victoria Police Pipe Band played the haunting Highland Cathedral as the wintry sky lightened, the crowd finally roused itself and another dawn service was over. "Very, very moving," said Kevin Lappin. "It was worth it. It was worth it." And he limped away, remembering, perhaps, that when he returned from Vietnam in 1971, he and his mates were flown in at midnight and put straight on trains and buses to go home because, among Australia's returned soldiers, they were not seen as heroes. But now, he was among those who, it was publicly declared, were the soul of Australia.