“My view is I was just doing my job. I was playing my part,” the World War II veteran said.

Mr Geelan served as a sergeant major in the special forces that propelled the enemy - the Japanese - away from Australia.

It was February 19, 1942 when World War II came to Australian shores.

The Japanese sent hundreds of aircraft to bomb Darwin, which they did, killing hundreds of Australians, army personnel, and damaging dozens of army aircraft and ships.

Mr Geelan recalls the mass panic and confusion that occurred.

“One of the army philosophies is a need to know,” he said. “We were taught only concern ourselves what we needed to know and not worry about anything else.

“We got phone calls from some of the islands north of Darwin saying there were a lot of planes coming over that looked like fighter bombers.

“And our hierarchy wrongly thought those planes were our own [as some planes were out practising] but they weren’t.

“The first bomb hit the post office then we realised things were happening. The next bomb, if I remember rightly, hit the hospital and the bombing went on from there.

“We army people moved back to the Adelaide River, aiming for Katherine, but then the Japanese bombers bombed Adelaide River and as far down as Katherine.”

The battle that followed would be the biggest in Australia’s history.

It would decide Australia’s future.

“We were afraid the Japs would land in Darwin and come down from Darwin through Australia. Our job was to prevent it and stop them ... which we did,” Mr Geelan said.

“I believe they [the Japanese] found it was going to be harder than what they thought. They thought they could walk in from the top of Australia, this wide open country, and do what they liked.

“They didn’t think they would have any opposition. But there was opposition that they weren’t expecting.”

Mr Geelan was an accountant when he joined the army as an 18-year-old in Sydney.

Anzac Day is a time where he remembers his fallen friends.

Since moving to Orange eight years ago from Launceston he has participated in the march down Summer Street every year.

He has been pushed for the last few years as he lost his left leg due to an infection from surgery in 2005.

But that doesn’t stop the 89-year-old.

Yesterday his grandson Josh, who was visiting from Hobart, had the privilege of pushing his grandfather in the march.

“This is the first time I have marched with him,” Josh said.

“It is quite moving.”