The awards look to remember and honour the service and sacrifice of Australians across a wide range of conflicts and peacekeeping operations.

This year students are being asked to look at the importance of commemoration to local communities and how that has changed over time in our society.

With many Anzac Day services around Australia and overseas last year not proceeding, we saw Australian communities adapt and commemorate Anzac Day in their homes - painting poppies and placing them in windows of houses, school children writing letters to our elderly veterans in aged care facilities, music tributes, current serving members calling veterans to check in, and solitary driveway tributes - the local community truly became the centre point of commemoration.

Initiatives such as the Anzac Day Schools' Awards help to ensure that Australia's future generations grow up with opportunities to learn about those who have served our nation and what they sacrificed.

I encourage all schools across Australia, teachers and students alike, to get creative this year with their entries and to make sure that you showcase what commemoration means to your local community.

Visit the Department of Veterans' Affairs' Anzac Portal - https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/research-education/competitions/anzac-day-schools-awards for information on how to apply.

It is sad to walk around the once-bustling Hargreaves Mall and see all the vacant shops.

What is sadder for me is that the hideous, all-pervasive "pop music"- unmelodious, repetitive racket-usually with shouted vocal noises, [words, possibly, but who knows?]makes it too unpleasant to spend more time there than absolutely necessary.

As last week's wonderful Bendigo Chamber Music Festival demonstrated, there are hundreds of people here who love "classical" music. It would be so inspiring to hear some of it broadcast occasionally in the Mall.

To those who feel the need for "pop music", there are headphones readily available. Otherwise, silence, or bird-song, and conversation and laughter would make the place more welcoming.