Former Australian Army soldier and veteran of the East Timorese crisis Dan Schultz chose to watch the Anzac Day march in Darwin with his young family rather than participate.
Anzac Day was an "awesome and special" one but with his bad knees and desire to watch the march with his wife and two young daughters he stood on the sidelines with thousands of other Darwin residents, .
Older daughter Emma was wearing replicas of her father's medals.
Large numbers of male and female past and serving personnel participated in Darwin, which is a military town with about 12,000 forces out of a population of about 140,000.
Mr Schultz was based for a while in Malaysia as a combat engineer, but the seven months he spent in East Timor to stop the violence after it voted for independence from Indonesia not long after joining at age 20 was the biggest event in his career.
"We were on the border out in the country where everyone was really so happy for us to be there," he told AAP.
"We were actually starting at the Indonesian posts across the river on the actual border eyeballing each other.
"There wasn't tension, but we always knew they were there. I guess when someone else has got a gun on the other side and you are both looking at each other it feels pretty opposing."
Mr Schultz hurt his knees from jumping off too many army tanks, he says, and now works as an NT police officer.
East Timor felt like an adventure with his mates as a 20-year-old but he was bored with the training and left in 2003, not knowing Australian troops would soon go to Iraq but he has no regrets.
He enjoys watching old army comrades march and looks for those he recognises and catches up with them during the day, some of whom he has not seen for years.
A highlight during this year's march was a flyover from air force jets, helicopters and tigers, which is the only day of the year they are allowed to fly over the city.
The march is the biggest shutdown of the city each year.
