There are two primary traditions on
ANZAC Day. The first is a public memorial service called the Dawn Service,
which is a reminder of the dawn landing on Gallipoli in 1915. In Canberra, it’s
held at the National War Memorial. The
service features hymns, prayers, the procession of veterans and current soldiers,
commemorative speeches, etc. It’s a huge deal. People start arriving by 4:30am
to be there in time for the 5:30am service. It sounded really interesting, but
the 4:30am arrival time discouraged us from choosing to go.
The second, equally popular, tradition
is called Two-up. This is an Australian gambling game, which was played by Australian
soldiers who were bored and looking for something to pass the time in the
trenches. Essentially the idea is that one person places 3 coins on a paddle
(which looks to be about the size and shape of a ruler), tosses them into the
air, and people bet whether at least two will land on heads or tails.
Traditionally the coins are pennies,
which are no longer used in Australia but are taken out once a year for just
this occasion. The, usually large, crowd stands in a circle, with the person flipping
the coins in the center as well as several other people who are there purely to
help manage the betting process by passing around money between participants. Basically,
the way the betting works is you find another person that wants to bet the same
amount of money for the opposite outcome. Each bet is usually just between two
people, so there are many bets taking place at the same time for each toss. The
person who calls tails holds the money, and the final money exchange at the
outcome is simply on the honor system. There are some more obscure rules and
betting options that it seems only true Australians really understand. The game
is only legal on ANZAC Day after 1pm and can be found all over Australia at
their many pubs and labor clubs. We went to one of the labor clubs near our
house to check it out. We had heard it was hugely popular and quite intense
with people calling out bets, cheering for their selected choice during the
coin toss, and cheering/groaning when the outcome was called. It did not
disappoint. Laurel participated on the gambling. She won one and lost the
second, so in the end broke even. That seemed pretty good for our first Two-up experience
and since most of the minimum bets seemed to start at $20 we stopped there.
We don’t have any photos, but I did
get a video on my phone of the action. Unfortunately, our blog has not been
letting us post photos for about the last month (hence the lack of recent
posts). It doesn’t look like it’s going to be cooperative with the video right
now either. Hopefully we’ll be able to sort out the problem soon so we can get
out this video as well as a bunch more photos.
