FARINA ANZAC SERVICE 2021
by STACEY DAVIDSON - SOUTH AUSTRALIAN BASED MEDIA STRINGER
The navy skies were still scattered with fading stars, stretching out beyond a remote Outback war memorial overlooking a gum lined creek when the crowd gathered for the 2021 Farina Anzac Day service. Almost 200 tourists and locals from nearby properties and communities came to commemorate Anzac Day 2021, a particularly poignant moment considering the cancellation of services last year, as well as the travel bans that were in place.
Farina, located 600 kilometres north of Adelaide in the Lake Eyre Basin, was a thriving railway town proclaimed in 1878, with the last shop closing in the 1960s.
It is now home to just two people who run the surrounding sheep and cattle station, also called Farina.
Farina’s population peaked at about 300 permanent residents, with cameleers and drovers boosting numbers at times. So far, research has revealed almost 70 men from the Farina district served for their country.
The impact the war had on this small, remote community – like others across Australia - would have been significant, but it was Defence guest Squadron Leader (ret.) Lindsay Campbell CSM’s reference in the service to a local family that brought home the human impact that must have been felt.
“On Anzac Day there is a natural focus on those who died in battle but as the effects of later, and very recent, conflicts have shown, there is so much more work to do in not just caring for the families of those who lost loved ones – and the Napier-Bell family of Farina are a prime example – out of three sons who went to war only one returned.
“Can you imagine what it was like for a mother and father to receive home only one of their three sons who came home with psychological and physical scars that he and his family would carry all their lives?”
So, it was the Campbell’s plea that while we remember the fallen, we also “remember the broken men and women who came home with both the psychological and physical scars of battle that never went away”.
An Anzac Day service is only held every three years at Farina, with this year’s including a Walk of Remembrance from the memorial, through the ghost town, finishing at the newly rebuilt “Patterson’s House” where a gunfire breakfast was served.
The Anzac service is part of a bigger program to breathe life into the ghost town. For eight weeks from May to July each year volunteers from across Australia come to camp and restore the buildings, which includes firing up the 130-year-old underground bakery to produce everything found in a modern-day bakery..
