Australians honour war dead

One by one, players who knew all about Gallipoli - courtesy, presumably, of Mel Gibson - admitted that learning the far more staggering extent of casualties in northern France was like a new voyage of discovery.

Never mind cricket; this lot do things right off the field, too. They may play the game as if it means everything but the sense here was of grown-ups with the right priorities and perspective.

They had only been in England for a day following a marathon flight and frankly didn't need this trek to northern France to stand about in a field in the driving rain. Yet they were aware it was important that they came.

As Symonds remarked: "Maybe we could do with an extra day in the nets but you can have a net session anywhere, any time. A day like this, though, is just priceless."

That's how it felt to Gillespie. Wandering solemnly through a thousand white headstones fronting the Australian National Memorial while also searching in vain for the grave of his wife's great uncle, even this unsentimental figure admitted to a "totally humbling experience".

Gazing at the names of 11,000 dead inscribed in the giant poppy-dotted Memorial walls, how could his mates not be reminded that in another age, it would have been them? Up there was a Capt Gilchrist, a Lce Sgt McGrath, a Private Hayden, a Sapper Lee, a Corporal Warne and Lce Cpls Clarke and Gillespie.

The captain himself didn't pick out the name of Private Charles Ponting, a 22-year-old infantryman from his home Tasmanian town of Launceston. Yet the trip seems to have so fired his imagination that you can bet when he returns he'll make it his business to find if there's a family connection.

Ponting pooh-poohed the idea that this trip might have any bearing on team spirit for the forthcoming cricket challenges. Cricket? He'd almost forgotten about that. "Coming here's not about trying to improve team bonding. It's really just a life experience for all of us," he shrugged.

Yet, from the outside, it feels these life experiences are a significant part of the constant reinvention and refreshing of this great side. Coach John Buchanan's credo seems to be "Vive la difference" whether it be following the exhortations of ancient Chinese war lords or getting a player to lecture his team-mates rivetingly with the history of Qantas.

This day, everyone agreed, was compelling in its unexpected variety. There was the eeriness of that coincidence when, precisely as Ponting laid a wreath at the foot of the Memorial tower, the heavens opened. Then the warm greeting from the French Cricket Association president who, already having Richie Benaud onside as his organisation's patron, was urging the Aussies to win the Ashes and then perhaps take on cricket's version of Les Bleus in Paris.

Above all, they savoured the marvellous welcome from a little town which never forgot being saved by the heroism of the 'Diggers' in a tide-turning conflict in 1918.

Indeed the inhabitants of the town remains so grateful that they have brought it upon themselves to turn it into a mini-Melbourne complete with a museum honouring their saviours.

A bunch of schoolkids who didn't know Ponting from Adam still greeted him like Zinedine Zidane. Dining in "Restaurant Le Kangaroo" wasn't bad either.

Symonds said he felt "uplifted" by this perfect way to launch their tour. Listening to his enthusiasm, you couldn't help wondering how uplifted England had been in comparison by beating up Bangladesh with two innings defeats.

Yet Ashes preparation talk was wholly irrelevant this day. Perhaps Adam Gilchrist will one day reflect on this summer and savour a matchwinning ton. Yet like those of us privileged to have joined this pilgrimage, you know he'll recall with most emotion the moment in the driving rain when his teammates linked arms, bowed heads and heard him intone: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them . . ."