RSL president Tony Smith led the service on a cool morning with almost 2000 people present as the sun began to infiltrate the darkness from the east.

Bagpiper Mary Jane played a haunting lament while didgeridoo player Ronnie Guivarra accompanied the laying of wreaths.

Guest speaker Robbie Katter paid tribute to the sacrifices made by our men and woment at war and also by the support workers at home were often taken for granted.

“There were 50,000 (Australian) soldiers killed in World War One alone,” Mr Katter said.

“There was real pain felt not only by the individuals themselves but also at home by the people they left behind.”

Mr Katter said a Henry Lawson poem called Scots of the Riverina captured that grief well and took it to a personal level.

Mr Katter read out the poem which had the lines:

“The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die. 

There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai; 

But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk -- 

There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk.”

Mr Katter said the grief captured in that poem was multiplied 50,000 times across the nation in the war.

“I believe the sacrifice made on account of the fact the First World War occurred at a time we were young as a nation and there was a sense of hope, optimism and freedom in the future,” he said.

“Perhaps they were aware of it or not but they were very central to the ideals they carried with them through that war.”

Mr Katter said he met a French artist from a town obliterated by the war who now lives in western Queensland.

“In her village they honoured the sacrifice made by Australians and when she found out what Australia was she decided she wanted to live there for the rest of her life,” he said.