In 2015, I was in Gallipoli for the commemorations marking the centenary of the campaign that helped shape a young Australia and ended the lives of more than 8700 young Australians. A few days prior to the April 25 services, before the tourist buses and the phalanxes of national leaders with their security people rolled onto the peninsula, I took a solitary walk from Anzac Cove up to Lone Pine.

The journey was not far in distance, less than a couple of kilometres, but it took me back in time.   

It was a hike through a stunning landscape. Even without the history and the meaning attached to this place, the passing of the years has created something extraordinary. Above the bays and coves along the Dardenelles, the earth heaves. Cliffs and steep hills and deep-gouged valleys that the allied soldiers had to scale in 1915 reach up to the serrated ridge lines.

In places, trees and bushes hang on tenaciously, but there are also furrowed and eroded gullies of raw earth. Nothings grows, as though the vegetation has been ripped out like tufts of hair from the crusty scalp of the land. It is a landscape that is desperately beautiful, shaped by not just Mother Nature but the hands of men fighting and killing each other. It is a tortured terrain.

Below the surface, this part of the peninsula holds the remains of thousands of young men and boys - comrades, allies, and enemies - now together for all time.

On the surface itself are reminders of what all those soldiers were doing here, and how they died. Why they had to die defies explanation more than 100 years on. The grooves of old trenches run to nowhere, and in the dirt are the artefacts of war, which reveal their rusting selves every now and then; a strip of barbed wire, shrapnel, the shell of a bullet. And blooming all over the peninsula, like new growth on an ancient land, are neat patches of radiant lawn and carved stone. They are the war cemeteries.

About a third of the way up the hill on my trek, I reached what I consider the most beautiful cemetery on the peninsula, Shell Green. It was on this site that the famous picture of soldiers playing cricket was taken. More than a game, this was a diversion to give the Turks the impression the Australians were staying put, when they were actually preparing to evacuate from Gallipoli. But in another sense, it was an affirmation of life, to play a game of cricket in the midst of so much death. It was defiantly Australian.

The view from Shell Green Cemetery is spectacular, as you look down the coast, with the fingers of land grasping at the sea. This particular day was overcast, so the sea was gun-metal grey, which somehow only added to the serene beauty of the scene.

Yet I didn’t stop here to look out, but to look back. For in Shell Green Cemetery lie the remains of 408 Australians.

I spent about half an hour walking along the rows of headstones, reading the names and the ages. Most were so young, they could have been my sons. But they had all been somebody’s son. Many of the epitaphs indicated that.

“There is one link death cannot sever, the love of a devoted mother,” read the inscription on the headstone of Trooper Lyle Hugh Florian O’Neill, who was aged 27 when he died on 17 September, 1915.

The words on the headstone of P.J. Boland (aged 19) were simpler yet no less heart-breaking: “Our Brave Boy”.

And on the memorial to Captain C.A. La Nauze (aged 33), there was one word that said it all. “Beloved”.

But no words could properly express what the loved ones of these soldiers had lost. Nor could any words explain what communities, large and tiny, across Australia had lost. For each of these men and boys had come from a community. They were serving not just for their nation or the empire, but for something much closer to their hearts and homes, their community. And their community would be diminished when they didn’t return. A young soldier’s death made it that much harder for some little communities to live.     

I had no words after reading the reminders of all these lost lives in Shell Green Cemetery. I could do little more than stare out at the gun-metal grey sea and think. And it was as a result of experiences like this one on the Gallipoli peninsula that I came to realise that Anzac Day is about more than remembering and honouring those who have served, and those we have lost.

It is also an acknowledgement, even a celebration, of the enduring power of community. The day is about more than battles made distant by time and kilometres; it is about the present. It is about how history and people long gone continue to shape who we are, and where we live.

I was reminded of how the past is directly linked to now a few days ago when I was speaking at my local RSL sub-branch’s Anzac luncheon. Outside the RSL club is a war memorial, just as there is in communities around the country. One of the commemorative plaques pressed onto the memorial wall is for Lieutenant Peter A. Hines.

Lieutenant Hines was killed in Vietnam on July 21, 1969. In echoes of the Redgum song, I Was Only 19, Peter stepped on a landmine around the same time man first stepped on the moon. While American astronauts were making history, our little community lost part of its future. An 8-year-old boy lost his Dad. And a woman lost her husband.

That woman was sitting near me as I spoke at the luncheon.

Norma Hines is an integral part of our community. She is a tireless worker, including for the RSL sub-branch, and a friend to many. What’s more, Norma is a delight to share a glass of wine with. She is loved and respected.

The way Norma lives, and what she brings to so many lives, is what Peter was fighting for.  

So on Anzac Day, we will remember them. We shall attend dawn services, and we shall read their names on memorials. But each and every day, we should honour those who have served by playing an active part in our community, no matter what form that takes. 

We should cherish, celebrate and defend all that we have, and all that we can be, in our community. For the memorials hold the names of so many people who would have given anything to return and play a role in their community.  

We can’t turn back time, and we can’t heal all the wounds of war, but for all those young men and women who did their bit, surely we can do ours.