Dawn services were held from Scone to Newcastle, but the message was the same – Lest we Forget.

Fairfax journalists and photographers were on hand across the region to document the services and stories of the day.

Which service did you attend? We want to see how you commemorated Anzac Day. Send your photos to jessica.brown@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Meet 100 of the service men and women from World War I here. 

Ken Fayle and Stephen Finney first met each other on the train to Singleton after being called up for national service.

It wasn’t a serendipitous encounter, but more a matter of process based on their surnames.

“Our birthdays came up and our numbers dropped. My name’s Finney, his is Fayle – we had consecutive service numbers,” Mr Finney said. “And that was that.”

That first encounter on the train was decades ago. Read their story.

After playing the bagpipes at a ramp ceremony in Iraq for a close mate, RAAF avionics technician Corporal Andy Summers returned home to Medowie “a mess”. 

“I lost my mate two weeks before deploying home,” he said of his first deployment, in 2007. 

​”So I didn’t see combat, but I saw the impact of conflict.” Read on.

For four years Pennie Looker ignored the warning signs. Working in the Australian Army Psychology Corps, she was acutely aware of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but that vast knowledge did not stop her suppressing her emotions. 

The army veteran of 19 years used work as a distraction. She piled it on herself, she enrolled her kids in extra activities. She made herself so busy she “didn’t have the time to stop and think”. Read on.

As thousands flocked to Australia’s war memorials to honour the dead from wars long past, too many veterans of more recent military service are homeless, jobless and traumatised and too many are taking their own lives.

According to some statistics, seven returned service personnel have taken their lives so far this year, and 75 took their own lives during 2016. Read the full report.

The sounds of martial ceremony rang through Newcastle’s streets a day before Anzac Day, as the crew of HMAS Newcastle took part in a freedom of entry march through the city.

The ship’s full complement of 184 servicemen and women gathered on Monday for the march, which began in Perkins Street with a ceremonial exchange with police, wound through Hunter and Darby streets, and finished with a bugler playing the Last Post in Civic Park. More here.

A special memorial dedicated to the ‘Walers’ used by the Light Horsemen in the first world war was unveiled on Tuesday at Cessnock’s time-honoured Anzac Day race meeting.

Newcastle Jockey Club chairman Geoff Barnett, along with representatives from veteran support organisation Soldier On, were on hand at Cessnock Racecourse to officially unveil a life-size statue of legendary war horse ‘Bill the Bastard’. Read on.

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