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Monday, 12 September 2011
Page: 9597

Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (13:48): Townsville has just hosted four days of celebrations to mark 60 years of national service. It was a truly great long weekend. Townsville rolled out the welcome mat for nashos from around Australia and New Zealand, in particular from Christchurch. We raised money for them for their continued efforts to rebuild—and we put no end of rubbish on them about the World Cup! There were only about 25 of them, as opposed to about 900 of us.

We enjoyed a meet and greet on Thursday night for about 800 people. There was a dinner and a community concert, including Normie Rowe singing Ooh La La and Que Sera Sera, but the Playboys were not there with him. There was a dawn service and a commemorative march through the brand-new Flinders Street and onto Anzac Park for a community breakfast and lunch afterwards.

My dad was a nasho in the second intake in 1952. He was not able to make the celebrations. My dad is getting quite old now, but he would have been very, very proud of the number of lies and stories of theft and conflagration from the men that were standing around there, remembering the good old days! It was truly something to be inspired by.

Congratulations to Warren Hegarty and his committee, who organised the celebration. We were the only celebration of 60 years of national service, and it is something of which we should all be very proud.