Following yet another Anzac Day ceremony without the flags flying from the township’s highest point, Creswick RSL secretary Phil Carter said he had spoken to RSL state president Major General David McLachlan for help, who in turn said he would recruit national RSL support.

He also said Major General McLachlan would call on political support, and that they had already received offers of funding from other sources.

Hepburn Shire Council passed a policy in January the flags would instead be flown on the footpath in front of the Creswick Hub. A similar policy was passed for Clunes, with the council citing unsafe access to the Town Halls’ stairwells as the reason.

Mr Carter said he and other veterans felt disappointed during this year’s Anzac Day ceremony that the flags were not being flown from their proper place.

“We’re not going to give up. It’s now two and half years to the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI. We want the flag flying on the 11th November, 2018. There has to be a flag flying by that time,” Mr Carter said.

“They’ll say they’re flying the Australian flag and the Aboriginal flag in front of the hub, that’ s good enough. But we’re not going to accept that, that’s not the highest point of where the flags can be.”

Mr Carter said council staff had told him to focus on the present, rather than what had been available to the town in the past.

Mr Carter said Creswick had a rich history and that during the mining disaster, the township had mourned at the local Town Hall.

“You can’t take history away from a town,” he said.

He also said he believed the Creswick community, if they had a choice, would prefer $30,000 be spent on restoring the flags to the Town Hall rather than the controversial “cup and ball” sculpture Dearest, due to be erected in Calembeen Park.

Creswick ward councillor Don Henderson said the problem was not about funding, but about finding a solution to the OHS issues in the Town Hall’s stairwell.

He said he had been speaking with Abel Flag in Melbourne to find a design solution, given a clock mechanism inside the tower made fixing the problem difficult, and said Mr Carter’s threats of bringing in national support would do no good.

“Let him bring the big guns in, let him bring in national RSL, maybe they can tell me how to do it. If they’ve got a safe way to do it, we’ll take notice of them,” he said.

“He can bring in Queen Elizabeth II if he wants but it won’t make any difference – you’ve got to find a solution.”