Strange as it sounds, but Tamworth may have had its biggest Anzac Day in years during the worst pandemic in a century.
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Tamworth RSL sub-branch president Jayne McCarthy said there was barely a street in the city that didn't 'light up the dawn' with their own informal dawn service on Saturday.
She's told as many as 3000 normally front up at the town's Anzac Memorial gates, but it's impossible to tell in the dawn darkness, she said.
"It's hard to say but I can only imagine that every street had something happening. I couldn't see that there wasn't a street that didn't have something," she said.
"For a town like ours, it's just wonderful."
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With the country in coronavirus lockdown, Australians were forced to cancel traditional dawn services for the first time since the second World War.
Instead, the RSL asked the country to mark the occasion, at dawn, in their driveway.
Musicians - including at least one bagpiper - struck up the Last Post across the city.
Jayne McCarthy, a 20-year veteran of navy intelligence, attended a "street" Anzac day service alongside dozens of other residents in her street, plus a piper.
With perhaps dozens of informal services across the city, it's "possible" that more people attended than usual, she said.
"I actually was reflecting on it. I think because the community was so invested they did things that they probably wouldn't ordinarily do," she said.
"The little extra effort that went into it, I think, was astounding.
"(COVID-19) made it more involved."
But strict COVID-19 restrictions have also meant the local sub-branch has not been able to raise money by selling poppies.
Many small sub-branches rely on the year's two major fundraising events to finance welfare service for veterans. Without the donations of community members on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day they may not have another source of income.
Tamworth is a bigger sub-branch and doesn't rely on donations to keep the lights on, but it will "make it harder", the president said.
It also means the RSL can't be "selling their story" on street corners.
"We can't be out there saying - 'hey, the reason you're giving us money is because we help veterans'," Mrs McCarthy said.
"We're not selling that story, that we help veterans."
