Frail vets' special service

The bemedalled veteran (he served in New Guinea) was well qualified to judge whether or not things get better with age. He responded to my impertinent question about his age with the news: ''I've only a few days to go to be 90.''

Wednesday's ceremony was designed to give those who are a bit too frail to face April 25th's Anzac Day big crowds and long ceremonies an accessible, smaller, shorter version of the ceremony. But, although a shorter version, it was certainly the real, authentic thing. It had almost everything the Anzac Day Dawn Service has, with plenty for Ricco Eccles and everyone else to find magnificent and moving.

There was a band of members of the Band of the Royal Military College and the Australian Rugby Choir led us in singing the hymn O God Our Help in Ages Past and then the national anthem.

There were wreath layings (Ricco Eccles, using a walking stick, walked up gingerly to lay one of them) while the band played the soulful melodies of the hymns Lest We Forget, Rock of Ages and Abide with Me.

There was the Last Post, the minute's silence (during which in the distance cockatoos raved and there was the faint sound of Anzac Day ceremony rehearsals going on) and then the Rouse.

There was a short but ornate welcome by Doctor Brendan Nelson, the new director of the memorial, and then a simple but heartfelt commemorative address by Warren Snowdon, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs.

Wednesday's congregation was ferried to the Memorial (right up to the accessible western courtyard) by a fleet of the vehicles belonging to the Canberra and district aged care facilities where they live.

Ricco Eccles came to Wednesday's occasion from Yass, where he lives at the Thomas Eccles Gardens facility in the Linton Village. Thomas Eccles, Ricco Eccles' uncle, had been a much-decorated veteran of the Great War.

Wednesday's event took place outdoors under skies of battleship grey and right beside an imposing brute of a naval gun that during Ricco Eccles' war adorned HMAS Australia.

On a still morning the breeze did occasionally whisper in the leaves of enormous old trees.

In his welcome Dr Nelson, perhaps giving us a glimpse of many purple-prosed speeches to come during his tenure, said that the War Memorial was ''the repository of this nation's soul''.

He told the small congregation that ''our values, our beliefs, the way we relate to one another and see our place in the world, have been given to us largely by you and the almost 2 million Australian men and women who over a century [have worn our military uniforms] those of you who have come here today, men and women from our aged care facilities, your generation is arguably the finest this country has ever produced.

''You were born in the aftermath of one devastating war [the Great War of 1914-1918] and came to your adult lives in the shadow of a second. You considered service to one another and to your country more important than your rights, values more important than value …''

Mr Snowdon paid tribute not only to those who had gone away to fight in wars (his father had been a veteran of World War II) but to their spouses and families.

''The spouses [of returned men] had to understand a lot of which they knew nothing. I can remember well an uncle, a person who'd served in the war and come back. He was one of those of whom you often used to say 'He's in the horrors.' He came back very badly affected by his wartime experience. As a consequence his life was difficult and so was the life of his wife, and their many children.

''So when we're thinking about this wartime experience and acknowledging the role of those men and women in uniform we must also acknowledge the support they were given by their partners and their families. And so to you [those in the audience who were never in uniform themselves but who supported those who were] I say thank you, thank you, thank you.''

So often, at Anzac Day occasions, even the weather seems to join in the spirit of reverence.

That happened on Wednesday when, after all that battleship greyness, the sun came through, patriotically, just in time to illuminate the playing and singing of the national anthem.

As a three-year Centenary of Canberra project that began in 2010, Barbara van der Linden set about painting the portraits of ''the characters and identities who make this such an interesting and unique place to live''. Now she's finished and her book of her portraits, 2013 - Faces of Canberra, will soon be published.

Even through the pain of not being chosen as one of her subjects (when people one has never even heard of, like a Mark Carmody and a Tim the Yowie Man, have been) it's obvious to this columnist that the portraits have enormous oomph and flair.

Here from the book is her novel portrait of Jon Stanhope, with, playfully, what looks at first like a small bird perched on his shoulder but is of course in the distance behind him that giant scrap metal bird of prey and its nest at the Arboretum. The juxtaposition of Stanhope with the Arboretum's pterodactyl-sized eagle of course celebrates his role as a champion of the Arboretum and as a philistine-defying champion of public art.