RAAF serviceman Austin Asche has just about done it all in life but it's Anzac Day that means everything to the 93-year-old and he believes it should to every Australian.
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It is a measure of the esteem in which he is held that Bill Shorten made a beeline for him and sat for a quiet chat at the Northern Territory's main dawn service on Thursday.
The federal opposition leader had just addressed a crowd of several thousand at the Cenotaph War Memorial overlooking Darwin Harbour and the Timor Sea.
After growing up in Darwin Ms Asche moved to Victoria but resettled after the bombing of the Top End in World War II to find the city largely destroyed and teeming with Australian and US forces.
After serving during the war in Darwin, on Bathurst Island and in the Bonaparte Archipelago, he forged a lengthy legal career before being appointed administrator of the Northern Territory - the equivalent to a state governor - in 1993.
He was also the third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the NT.
Yet none of his achievements overshadow the significance to him of Anzac Day.
"It is part of what we grow up with, part of our culture given to us by brave men and women and many of our great men and women have carried it on in Korea and Vietnam and many other places," Mr Asche said at the Darwin cenotaph.
"Everybody should serve at some stage, meeting friends and fellow Australians."
Mr Asche said he had enjoyed a visit to Darwin High School only the previous day and saw "kids who must have been every nationality ... all celebrating Anzac Day,".
"They may not (understand) yet but they will ... and they'll know that's being part of Australia carrying on tradition," he said.
Mr Shorten told those present, including locally-based Australian and US defence service workers, the sacrifices made in the past had allowed a free, democratic society.
"Seventy-seven years ago bare metres from here and in the waters behind us ... Japanese bomb's brought war to Australia," he said.
"Together we pledge to do better and do more to help the new generation home from Afghanistan with the transition to civilian life.
"Those who have fought for our country should never have to fight post traumatic stress or poverty or homelessness on their own."
The most senior Air Force member in the NT, wing commander Steven Parsons, told the service that in an imperfect world Australia had to stand up for what it believed was right.
"When it is necessary to preserve the peace in our region and elsewhere in the world, we must be prepared to deploy our forces, to struggle for and protect the rights of our own nation and that of our neighbours," he said.
Australian Associated Press