General News
16 November, 2025
We honour them
HUNDREDS of people attended Remembrance Day services across Ararat Rural City on Tuesday, including dozens of local school children. Tuesday the 11th of November marked 107 years since the Armistice was signed to end World War I — a conflict that claimed the lives of 60,000 Australians.
People across Australia shared a minute's silence at 11am to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 — the moment guns fell silent across the Western Front and the war ended.
In Ararat, close to 200 people attended a service at the Ararat Cenotaph while other small gatherings were held in Willaura and Lake Bolac.
The Ararat service included dozens of local school children from Ararat College, Marian College and St Mary’s Primary School as well as representatives of many local community groups and council officials.
Ararat RSL President Frank Neulist delivered the keynote address which will be his last before retiring early next year.
He said World War I began with great fanfare, but ended in tragedy for so many.
“Many expected it to be over quickly with heroes returning home, laden down with shiny new medals pinned to their chests. Unfortunately, things did not turn out that way. The war lasted four years and millions of combatants and non-combatants died.
“Men lived in rat-infested subterranean holes along hundreds of miles of muddy trenches and fought vicious hand to hand battles that contained little glory but inflicted unbelievable death, pain and destruction,” he said.
Mr Neulist said World War I marked the beginning of an era where technology made killing people easy.
“Hundreds of thousands of men were killed by machine guns, barbed wire, new artillery and more sophisticated rifles. One of the most disturbing weapons was poison gas.
Mr Neulist said the loss of 60,000 Australian lives left a scar on our nation.
“The impact on our small nation of the horrific losses of our best was profound, because we lost so much of the future talent of our country in the arts, the sciences, in sport, in agriculture, in industry, in politics and indeed as the future fathers of happy, well cared for families.
“The sadness and the memories of war and its meaning can only really live inside those who served and in the homes that sacrificed. But that is no excuse to forget.
“Every Australian should remember and thank those who left the security of Australia and gave up jobs, family, friends and other loved ones to live with mud, heat, rain and disease, to eat bad food, to carry great weights and to live with the daily risk of maiming or death from bullet, grenade, shell, mine, gas or bayonet.
If in today's changing, complex and at times difficult circumstances, we can live by the values they fought and died for, we will have nothing to fear,” Mr Neulist said.
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