Anzac lights in Lincoln Anzac Day

Michael (Mac) MacCuspie, of Port Lincoln, SA, normally has a full day on Anzac Day — dawn service with his wife, Chris, gunfire breakfast at the RSL cooked by a local hotel social club, the march past the RSL to the war memorial in Flinders Highway and back to the RSL for two-up.

As with veterans everywhere, he found a new way to mark Anzac Day this year, remembering his father’s service in the Second World War, and an uncle buried at sea as he was returning from the First World War, as well as his own service.

Conscripted the year he was married, in 1969, Mac served as a cook with 5 Company Royal Australian Army Service Corps and at 1st Australian Field Hospital in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971.

After discharge he returned to his home town on Eyre Peninsula’s southern end and spent five years poling tuna in the tuna fleet, and after driving a crane for three years, ran his own concreting business in Port Lincoln until his retirement in 2012.

‘Obviously Anzac Day was different but we had people all over town with lights at the top of their driveways,’ he said. ‘There was music all over, playing the Last Post, we had our rum and milk at 6 am for the SA service and again at 6:30 for our local service.’. This year Mac and his family marked the dawn in their driveway, adjourned for gunfire breakfast and had a socially distanced game of two-up using poker chips.

An elderly man named Mac and his granddaughter Jemma playing two-up in a shed. There is furniture in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two-up: Mac and granddaughter Jemma.