The freedom to enjoy a Sunday morning, and a timely reminder of what made it possible

On a sparkling Sunday morning, along a coastal track, runners and walkers are out in force. A few fathers jog along, pushing prams to the tune of bright, tinkling nursery rhymes, perhaps giving sleep-deprived partners some extra time in bed.

A fit, grey-haired woman wearing gloves extracts rubbish from the straggly scrub on the edge of the beach. She is barefoot. Her pink sandals sit on the low stone wall above the beach, like dogs waiting outside the supermarket, conspicuous and incomplete without their owner.

Further along, swimmers, in heavy-duty wetsuits, emerge from the sea, perhaps training for a dive in deeper waters.

The salty sea air, fresh and cleansing, drifts over to me, full of the promise of holidays to come and dips and books to devour to the soothing whispering of the waves.

Over at a beachside cafe, a kingly infant is frowning, the unwilling participant in his parents’ attempt to re-enter the adult world of cafes and sedentary seaside coffee drinking.

There are dogs meeting dogs with the same exuberance of a child encountering another child with a ball. One dog, carrying a Frisbee in his mouth, excites a passing Labrador, who tenses playfully, ready to go fetch.

There’s a playground pirate ship, its middle missing as if blown out by a cannon. A parent holds a toddler high in the air near the ship’s upper deck for a bird’s-eye view, while older children, thin and swift, rush in and out of the ship’s compartments, playing hide and seek. Adults walk past the ship without a backward glance; it has no currency for them.

Star-shaped purple wild flowers grow in the bushland, and long grasses cast shadows on the beach track as the currawong calls contentedly overhead.

To be among all of this is to be free.

Nestled in the grass by the path is a flat plaque. It records that on February 25, 1915, Alexander Henry White, born in Ballarat, left for the First World War. He died less than six months later, on August 7, 1915, while leading his men of the 8th Light Horse Regiment in the first line of the ill-fated charge at the Battle of the Nek, Gallipoli. The plaque honours his memory.

A crocheted poppy rests in the dirt beneath the plaque, faded and bleached by the sun. Like Poe’s tell-tale heart, it draws my attention, seeming to implore those who pass by not to forget the soldiers whose sacrifice has made our freedom possible.

We must not forget. We must remember those who fought for our peace, who showed courage, especially when victory was unlikely. Their selfless acts rise above the mists of time, beyond a hundred years and more, and blare like trumpets in my ears as I walk in the sunshine, free as a bird, on a normal Sunday morning.

Thanks to them.

Melissa Coburn is a Melbourne writer.