Eye-popping poppies popular

An eye-catching display of hand-crocheted poppies at this year's Newdegate Machinery Field Days were a reminder to those attending of the fragility of life.

In working with this year's theme of commemorating "100 years of servicemen and women", the poppies were borrowed from the Lake Grace Community Art Space, which made the single-stem flowers.

Field days sponsorship and promotions officer Stephanie Clarke-Lloyd thanked the group of volunteers who had carefully made 2100 hand-crocheted poppies through the Lake Grace Community Art Space last year.

"The poppies were displayed in the streets of Lake Grace last year to commemorate World War I and World War II," Mrs Clarke-Lloyd said.

"This year the Lake Grace Community Art Space kindly provided them to us to use as part of our display commemorating the 100 years of service men and women."

A total of 1500 single-stem poppies were displayed outside the new restored Railway Building, as well as 600 poppies attached to wire as part of the Plum Grove partnership display in the Dyson Jones Pavilion, which commemorated 100 years of Australia's servicemen and women including local stories.

"Their installation really is a reminder of the harshness of war," Mrs Clarke-Lloyd said.

"The poppies are so fragile, they really are quite stunning blowing in the wind."

Red poppies were among the first to flower in the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium in the Great War; the same poppy also flowers in Turkey in early spring, as it did in April 1915 when the Anzacs landed at Gallipoli.

Traditionally poppies are worn on Remembrance Day (November 11) each year.