ANZAC Day Brisbane
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ANZAC Day Brisbane

Chris Harvey
A dog in a small Akubra holding a flag in his teeth while his owner marched. Some photographs do not need a caption.

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A row of service medals resting on a tweed lapel tells you more about a life than any biography. You just have to be close enough to read it.

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Two jets in formation over a sandstone corner. The contrast between the heritage building and modern aircraft is the kind of collision ANZAC Day produces every year.

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She marched with the particular focus of someone who has practised this many times and is doing it for reasons that matter to her. That is the face worth finding.

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The white dress uniform, the ceremonial mace, the row of medals — everything about the image says service. The posture says the rest.

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From the Author

Brisbane shuts a significant portion of its CBD for ANZAC Day, and the result is one of the few occasions in the year when you can stand in the middle of George Street and look down an empty road lined with thousands of people standing in silence. That moment, just before the march begins, is worth showing up for on its own.

I have photographed the Brisbane ANZAC Day march several times, and what strikes me every year is how little it changes in its essential character — and how different the photographs are each time. The people are different. The light shifts. The details that catch your attention are never quite the same as the year before.

On the Dawn Service: The 4:28am start at ANZAC Square draws a crowd that has grown every year. There is something unusual about several thousand people gathering before sunrise in formal silence. The quality of attention is different from any other event I photograph — nobody is looking at their phone, nobody is talking. Everyone is there for the same reason.

On the march: The march moves from Elizabeth Street through the CBD and I position myself along the route where I can see faces rather than backs. Mounted soldiers give you strong vertical lines against the crowd. Veterans in wheelchairs give you medal closeups that carry decades of weight. The challenge is moving between these subjects without missing transitions.

On the unexpected: A white Akubra, a small Australian flag held in a dog’s teeth, a veteran in the crowd watching with an expression I could not quite name. These are the images that survive the edit. The official elements of the day are predictable — the wreath-laying, the Last Post, the flypast — but the human details are not.

On the flypast: Two RAAF jets in formation over the heritage buildings of the CBD is one of those images that requires no interpretation. You hear them before you see them, and you have perhaps four seconds to get the frame before they are gone. I missed it for two years before I understood the timing.

The Lone Pine Ceremony and the ANZAC Square Memorial Galleries are worth a separate visit outside of ANZAC Day. On the day itself, the crowd makes close photography difficult. But the march is where the photographs are.

More ANZAC Day coverage: ANZAC Day Photos 2010 · How to Photograph Anzac Day · Capturing the Essence of Anzac Day · ANZAC Day Brisbane 2023

Chris Harvey