Street parade commemorates Anzac soldiers

25 April 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Anzac land­ing at Gal­lipoli, a time for us to remem­ber the sac­ri­fices made by former Wel­ling­ton res­id­ents dur­ing the First World War.

To ensure this anniversary receives spe­cial com­mem­or­a­tion, Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil has organ­ised a street parade start­ing at 12,30pm on Fri­day, 24 April.

Vet­er­ans and their des­cend­ants will be joined by uni­formed mil­it­ary per­son­nel, march­ing to the sounds of mil­it­ary and school pipe bands along Lamb­ton Quay, Wil­lis Street and Wake­field Street.

Onlook­ers can also feast their eyes on vin­tage First World War vehicles, bor­rowed from Sir Peter Jackson’s per­son­al col­lec­tion, includ­ing an ori­gin­al Amer­ic­an Field Ser­vice ambu­lance and two horse-drawn car­riages pulling limbers and light­weight cannons.

The street parade will draw to a close on Tarana­ki Street, where two How­itzer can­nons and two Brit­ish First World War tanks will provide insight into the scenes of a bat­tle­field. At the newly opened Pukeahu Nation­al War Memori­al Park, the parade will be met by May­or Celia Wade-Brown and 150 region­al final­ists from the Nation­al Sec­ond­ary Schools Kapa Haka Competition.

And, if Wel­ling­ton pulls a fine day out of the bag, ori­gin­al First World War air­craft will treat the cap­it­al to a his­tor­ic fly-past, so keep those eyes to the sky!