The ability for photos to bring back memories continues to amaze me. This photo was taken approximately three months ago and yet, looking at it now brings back so many memories of my time in Vienna and all the amazing people I met. Odd! Photos, it would appear, are much more than a simple image on paper (or in my case, on a computer). So could it be said that photos are simply a memory-aid or is there something more to it than that?

For me, this photo and the many others I have finally seen of our time in Vienna, are not simply visual memories in my minds-eye (always an entertaining concept) but are also somehow memories that have not finished.

This seems like it could be explained much better in Spanish, which has a continuing past tense (imperfect) as well as a past-past tense (simple preterite). Looking at myself and my friends there reminds me not only of the time in Vienna but of the subsequent time with emails flying back and forth, which continues today.

It's all incredibly airy-fairy but then again memories always seem a little that way and I'm left with an incredible sense of wanting to be back there, while still here, and feeling like three months has been an amazingly short, and yet so long, time. And that, my friends, is the subjectivity of time and a whole other rant . . .

New Zealand's Unknown Warrior - one of the 30,000 New Zealanders who have died in overseas service - has been interred with full military honours at the National War Memorial.

The country's six most senior officers carried the casket from parliament to the Wellington Cathedral for the memorial service on Thursday.

The Remembrance Bell tolled 11 times - signifying the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when the Great War ended - as the coffin was placed at the front of the cathedral.

His casket was then loaded on a gun carriage for a slow march through the streets of the capital before arriving at the war memorial in Buckle Street.

There he was interred and a cloak of bronze inlaid with four greenstone crosses laid over his tomb.

Sand from Raglan and Mt Maunganui, pumice from Lake Taupo and mud from a Rotorua geyser, collected by the Returned Services Association, were also laid around his coffin.

New Zealand is one of the last of the war's participants to create a tomb of the unknown soldier. On November 11, 1920 Britain buried its own unknown soldier at Westminster Abbey.

Prime Minister Helen Clark says the tomb will allow people to pay their respects to New Zealand's war dead.

Clark says the idea for establishing the tomb goes back 80 years, and represents a growing understanding of the part history has played in shaping New Zealand.

The remains were exhumed on October 10 at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Caterpillar Valley cemetery in Longueval on the Somme.

During the battle of the Somme 1,560 New Zealanders died, and 1275 of them have no known grave.

The Unknown Warrior was believed to have first been exhumed in 1920 from a mass grave of 200 New Zealanders.

The chief of the Defence Force says the repatriation ceremony was a far more emotional undertaking than either he or those who went with him to France expected.

Air Marshall Bruce Ferguson says the soldier was most likely killed in the New Zealand advance of September 15, 1916 on the Somme.

He says for the French, it was like releasing one of their sons who they had taken care of for nearly 90 years.

A New Zealand Air Force Boeing 757 brought the casket to New Zealand on Wednesday and was greeted with a karanga, while Maori warriors flanked the bearer party.

He was then taken to parliament and received a general salute from a guard of honour and a powhiri. The casket was taken up the steps of parliament and into the legislative chamber.

A wreath-laying ceremony took place, with dignitaries including the Governor General and the Prime Minister paying their respects.

Earlier, Ferguson said they confirmed from items by the body that the dead man was a New Zealander.

"They keep meticulous records and from where he was found, who he was found with, and how he was found I'm virtually 100% sure he was a New Zealander," Ferguson said.

Some 100,000 soldiers from New Zealand fought in World War I, and many of those who died were never identified.

The government says around 30,000 New Zealanders have died in military conflicts since 1899 and around 9,000 of them lie in unmarked graves.

After World War I allied officials found that many bodies could not be identified and several nations decided to honour the memory of those soldiers.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_national_story_skin/458304?format=html

An event so full of emotion and more special because this unknown warrior represents all New Zealanders who have died in war. Lest we forget.