anzacs

I buy a tin of anzac biscuits at the supermarket the other day. I need a nice biscuit tin—this feels robust enough—and I like anzacs. It’s a win-win transaction. But when I open the slatted pantry door and my good woman’s eye alights on that tin, the image on the lid of a wounded digger being assisted from the trenches by a mate elicits a snort of derision.

Rock goes to the dawn ceremony today. His daughter wants to attend. He does not, but is happy to accompany her. She’s not passionate about anything much. His father and mine both fight in the second world war but Rock and I are of a generation that places less value on Anzac Day than the generations either side of us. My own daughter has seen two dawn services with my father.

Being a returned serviceman is all the identity my father has left to him. For 50 years he eschews the Anzac march, but now, at 86, he marches, sometimes in a car, last year a Roller. My mother will have no truck with the whole business. As a pacifist and conscientious objector to the Vietnam War (the court certificate is in my filing cabinet), I don’t care for the day much either.

  

I salute young men who go to war for whatever reasons—King and country, conscription, adventure, stupidity—and don’t come home. But the belief that Australia ‘came of age’ at Anzac Cove—a monumental British stuff-up that cost many Australian lives—is lost on me. Neither April 25 nor Australia (Invasion) Day cut it for me as appropriate national days.

I like the idea of calling the Queen’s Birthday holiday Wattle Day and making it our national celebration. (The British queen’s actual birthday is 21 April, and what the fuck does she have to do with us anyway?)

Here’s the recipe for Anzac Day. Whack a cup each of rolled oats and plain flour in a nice big mixing bowl. Add three quarters of a cup each of raw sugar and desiccated coconut. Meanwhile a small saucepan with 120 grams of butter and a big dollop of golden syrup should be merging on very low heat on the stove.

Now for the action. Pour about 30 millilitres of boiling water into a teaspoonful of bicarb soda and pop it into the molten butter and syrup. As it fizzes to the top of the saucepan, pour the lot into the dry ingredients. Mix the lot and spoon three-centimetre diameter rounds onto a greased baking tray. Slide it onto the middle shelf of a preheated oven at 160 Celsius. Twenty minutes should do the job.

Enjoy, and rock on.