In the pre-dawn darkness, they came to the edges of their driveways and lit lanterns and stood solemnly. Homemade wreaths of paper poppies hung from the letterboxes.
Through the quiet of the morning, with birdsong starting and the first suggestions of light dappling the clouds, a car radio carried the sound of the War Memorial's dawn service.
But the residents of this Kambah cul-de-sac were commemorating no ordinary Anzac Day.
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It was a sombre and reflective ceremony, complete with a minute's silence broadcast with the birdsong from the foot of Mt Ainslie. With a level of reverence perhaps unusual for the suburbs, they shared in a service not to be forgotten.
On Friday, the children on the street worked on their lanterns from their driveways, all visible to each other but far enough apart. Trish Graham, who had organised the lantern-making session and invited everyone to mark Anzac Day from their driveways, said it had been a welcome opportunity to bring all the neighbours together.
And then on Saturday morning there were the stories, shared as the day broke. The story of Kate McIntosh's grandfather, a prisoner at Changi who worked on the Burma Railway and was later evacuated to Japan. He was beneath Nagasaki when the bomb went off.
"[He was] very traumatised. He didn't talk about it at all to my grandma or my dad. Because I'm the oldest grandchild, I started asking questions for history and then he started opening up and Grandma was hearing stuff she'd never heard. It's pretty special," Mrs McIntosh said.
There were stories of army training, Spitfire pilots and Vietnam veterans. Of ancestors who landed at Gallipoli.
These stories had never been shared between neighbours, who were all quick to observe how much closer they had become since the pandemic had shifted their interactions with the world.
"My grandfather was at Gallipoli, and survived. And my father was in the Second World War, he was a pilot and engineer, served in the navy. So I've always been to Anzac mornings," Brent Fraser said.
And of course there were stories of Anzac Days past, where communities are brought together for marches and families woken well before dawn to make it to services. The games of two up, shotgun breakfasts, and long marches.
Ngaire Harvey talked about the many years she had marked Anzac Day with her father, who served in Vietnam.
"I go to ceremonies and I do things to remember him but I haven't been able to do that. So when my neighbour, Trish, organised for our street to do it, it was really nice to not feel alone," Mrs Harvey said.
"It's pretty lonely right now, but it's nice not to have to be alone on a day that's quite emotional for me anyway."
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