Anzac Day Tamworth 2020: RSL invites community to light up the dawn to commemorate Anzac Day

The outbreak of COVID-19 means this Anzac Day, no wreaths will be laid on the cenotaph.

But as the sun spills over the horizon, in the quiet of dawn, Tamworth residents are asked to remember the great sacrifice of soldiers from the end of their driveways instead.

"It's no less significant just because we can't have our regular services and our march," Tamworth RSL president Jayne McCarthy said.

"The importance of Anzac Day is still extremely valuable, it's probably more important that we find a way to commemorate because we can't do what we would normally do.

"Doing something small is better than doing nothing at all."

In just twelve nights, shortly after 4am on December 20, 1915 the last steamboat left the shores at Gallipoli.

What was planned as a valiant strike against the Ottoman Turkish defenders eight months earlier had quickly become a stalemate.

More than 8000 soldiers gave their lives in the war efforts, countless others were irrevocably changed.

Every year on April 25, Australians have commemorated the great loss that provided today's freedoms.

The Tamworth RSL Club has invited the community to stand at the end of their driveway at 6am as a mark of respect, to say The Ode from For the Fallen, to play the bugle or a record of the last post.

Others have taken to making wreaths at home to display in their windows or on the garden fence.

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It can be as simple as changing your profile picture on Facebook to a red poppy, Ms McCarthy said.

"There's a lot of talk about Anzac Day, what I find most interesting is that by not doing our usual thing its really brought a focus to Anzac Day and what it really means," she said.

"That's beautiful in itself."

Facebook support group Tamworth True has created an online map of households that plan to participate in Light Up the Dawn.

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