Call for help: Kojonup RSL sub-branch seeks to save town’s Anzac Day services amid potential disbandment

The Kojonup RSL has issued an SOS to the community as its last remaining members seek to keep the town’s Anzac Day commemorations alive despite fears about the future of the sub-branch. The problems the sub-branch is facing were outlined in a statement published on the front page of Kojonup’s community newsletter on June 24. The sub-branch has about only eight to 10 active members in their late 70s. Deputy president Robert Sexton said the sub-branch was “getting on the front foot” to start a discussion about the future of Anzac Day and other commemorations in the town. “With our age group, we don’t have a decade left — we have five years left and the present sub-branch has made the decision that it is best for us to do something while we have the wit and the energy to do it rather than wait until something catastrophic happens when we’ve lost our mettle,” he said. Mr Sexton said membership had dropped in the past decades as members died or had been unable to continue taking an active role. “We haven’t had a war of a decent size for 50 years or so, so we have a very small amount of ex-servicemen coming in, which is a good thing,” Mr Sexton said. “We don’t wish to have a war just so we can raise our members, but indeed we can have associate members and they can bolster our ranks and keep us going.” The Kojonup RSL has about 20 associate members who help with its operations but do not play an active role in the branch. Other people are eligible to become members — such as relatives of former service personnel — but they have chosen not to. One of the suggestions the sub-branch has put forward is for younger people in the community to replace ageing members. Another is for a community organisation to be created to run the town’s services. “If the community wants us to continue, they need to say how we will continue — it is not for us to make a unilateral decision about whether this thing exists or not,” Mr Sexton said. Mr Sexton said while local schools ran “unfailingly high-class” Anzac Day services, they were often not held on April 25 due to clashes with the school calendar. In Katanning, where the RSL sub-branch has been closed for almost a decade, the local Lions Club organises the town’s Anzac Day commemorations. The Shire of Narrogin took the lead for this year’s Anzac Day services in the town after the 105-year-old Narrogin sub-branch closed in March. Kojonup community service clubs have in the past contributed to commemorations. Mr Sexton said he believed there was strong support in the community for Anzac Day services to continue. “The demographics are interesting because you have the babies in arms right through to our elderly people, so quite clearly the community wants to remember on that day,” Mr Sexton said. “It is our only national day where we’re just people on that day and we don’t hold any other affiliations.” Alongside Anzac Day and Remembrance Day services in Kojonup, the sub-branch organises the Anzac Day service in Muradup, 17km west of the town. The organisation also provides advice to the Shire of Kojonup on the management of local war memorials, with the group currently involved in the Jingalup War Memorial preservation plans. Shire of Kojonup chief executive Grant Thompson said the council was open to playing a more active role in commemorations. “What we can do is help facilitate and enable the day to happen, so we’ll make sure that those people who have that history are involved still, but we can actually help with the organisation,” he said. He said abandoning the town’s Anzac Day services was not an option. “We need to do everything we can to maintain those services in town and recognise the veterans and the people who gave their lives for the freedom we have today and keep it in Kojonup,” he said. “As we look at the intergenerational change happening here, I think it’s paramount that the community takes on board something as well, not just relying on the RSL, and we do have a role to play in that. “At this point of time, it is to be seen where that’s going to go.” Mr Sexton said the remaining members of the sub-branch were focused on finding the right path forward. “We will be talking to all of the organisations in the town, principally the ones which have helped us the most in terms of the local government authority and the service clubs,” he said. “We think we have got about a year or more to get it right and that’s the most important thing — to get it right.” Anyone with ideas about the future of Kojonup’s RSL sub-branch and commemorations is asked to call the Kojonup RSL on 0407 991 922.