Junee RSL Sub-Branch Vice President Maurice Goldstraw and SGT Shane Robbie RAAF.
St Luke’s Anglican Church and the Junee RSL Sub-Branch held their third UN Peace-keeper Commemorative Service on May 25 from 9:30am at the church. Over fifty people attended with regular parishioners and guests including representatives from Wagga RSL Sub-Branch.
After the service, morning tea was served.
Rev David Hilliard has helped organising since its inception and is glad to see the service grow.
“It was really good. We had just on 50 people there and I think there were probably 12 visitors who don’t come to our church or come very infrequently,” he said.
“There were people who had a military background, not necessarily peacekeeping and civilians and it was very encouraging to see quite a number of new and different faces in the congregation, and I think it was well received.
“The musicians from Wagga provided a wonderful musical setting for this service. We had a lady in her 90s who was a former cooking teacher in the school system, who make a cake in the the Peacekeeper’s colour of blue. It had an edible topper on the cake of a picture of a Peacekeeper’s helmet.
“The President of the Wagga RSL Sub-Branch, Rod Cooper, and the Vice President of the Junee Sub-Branch, Maurice Goldstraw, cut the cake in remembrance of those who have served as peacekeepers.
“The morning tea, people just sat around and chatted and a lot of the conversation was about the service and a number of people expressed the opinion that they had actually learned something by being part of the service, so that was very encouraging and the conversation ust went on for quite awhile.”
Rev David said that the services has undergone a slight amount of change each time, but always was significant for one reason or another.
“There were some differences. I wouldn’t say it was better or worse. It was different. Last year we had the Solomon Islander male choir singing. This year we had one of our congregation read the poem Recessional by Rudyard Kipling.
“We had a few different people speaking on different topics. We had Major David Adams from Kapooka read a brief history of Australia’s involvement in UN Peacekeeping operations and we saw an official UN YouTube clip about a young female Swiss army officer in an observation role on the Indian and Pakistani border, and I think people found that really interesting.
“We’re going to go again next year since there was positive feed-back, not just about the morning tea, but about the service itself and having different people involved like we did. Let’s keep going.”
-Jack Murray
The South West Slopes Times covers an area approximately the size of Fiji in country NSW. We look after a population of more than 50,000 people with our staff servicing 7 major towns and dozens of villages with our story telling footprint.
We offer weekly print editions at $3 a copy and we also offer digital subscriptions across 3 months $30, 6 months $60 and 12 months $120.
We are one of the last truly local independent family run newspaper businesses in the state.
Contact us today to find out how we can promote your business or organisation across our huge network by emailing ads@thetimes.net.au or by calling 0413 763 216.
If you have a news tip, lead or scoop for us please make contact as we love celebrating our communities. You can contribute articles via our South West Slopes Times website.
