Mayor John Carter and Far North District Council chief executive Shaun Clarke (ex-RNZAF) were among those who laid wreaths in Kaitaia on Tuesday.
Freedom, bought for today's New Zealand by those who served in war, was a common theme at Tuesday's Anzac Day services in Kaitaia.
It was most eloquently expressed at the civic service by Rev Michael Withiel, who quoted American Army veteran Charles M Province's poem Freedom:
It is the soldier,
not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given is the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the peace camp organiser, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
It is the soldier, not the politician, who has given his blood, his body, his life.
It is the soldier who has given these freedoms.
Rev Withiel also told the service that the words of the Ode to the Fallen (They shall not grow old ... ) suggested that some things lasted beyond old age, and even death, values, virtues and human qualities that lived on in the collective memory of generation after generation.
"They live on not simply to keep alive our patriotism or our sense of national identity, but because they remind us again and again, in the midst of so much that is shallow, of what it is to be human - courage, loyalty, obedience, comradeship, care for others, generosity, self-giving, friendship, love," he said.
