In recent years the Anzac Day ceremonies at Hellfire Pass, held at dawn, have attracted increasing numbers of ‘pilgrims’. In 2012 an estimated 1100 people gathered around the commemorative memorial installed by the Australian government in 2005. Urged by the Australian officials they passed around bottles of water ‘in the Anzac spirit’.
After the ceremony visitors share a ‘gun breakfast’ of tea, coffee and Anzac biscuits at the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum above the cutting before travelling to Kanchanaburi War Cemetery for the 10 a.m. service. In recent years this has been moved from the traditional time slot of 11 a.m. because of the oppressive heat of Thailand in April. Here the rituals are more multicultural. Anzac Day, though a ceremony for Australians and New Zealanders, is being invested with meaning by other national groups that worked on the Thai–Burma railway. Thai authorities and defence personnel also lay many wreaths while young Thais play in the bagpipe band.
An official part of today’s Anzac Day in Thailand is the gathering on 24 April of Australians staying at the Home Phu Toey resort, near Hellfire Pass. Many of these ‘pilgrims’ are members of a Western Australian based Quiet Lions tour.
Their host is Thai businessman Mr Kanit Wanachote who became a close friend of Dunlop and other Australian prisoners when they returned to find the railway’s remains in the 1980s. In honour of Dunlop Kanit has created a Weary Dunlop Park in the grounds of his resort. This is the site of multi-faith ceremonies in memory of the dead while a Sound & Light show nearby re-enacts the bombing of a specially created miniature ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’.