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The powerful and the mighty past and present came, of course, and filled The Scots Church and spilled over Russell Street to St Michael's church, this being the state funeral of a former prime minister.
Yet there was something intimate at the heart of this last goodbye to Malcolm Fraser: a family farewell.
To Mr Fraser's granddaughter Rachael Fraser he was simply "granddad", who took mischievous delight in building an army of Twitter followers and whose favourite movie was The Bodyguard because of Whitney Houston and wanted to watch it again and again. To Rachael, Tamie Fraser, devoted wife of Malcolm, a woman loved across Australia, was simply "granny".
To another granddaughter, Hester Fraser, the former prime minister was worthy of a song she wrote for him, "The Camellia Tree". She sang it, ethereally beautiful at a grand piano framed by a great spray of foliage upon the altar. "...the magnanimity of your ideas will never die, and that is why we only say goodbye until we meet again..."
Daughter Phoebe Wynn-Pope felt him worth one of Theodore Roosevelt's greatest speeches: "... credit belongs to the man who has actually been in the arena ... whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement..."
Son Hugh felt that somewhere in his formative years his father had discovered a lifelong belief "in the power of one" and had felt himself a custodian of all around. Hugh, reflecting on his father's passing, declared he somehow felt "less safe".
Others felt the loss of a father, too, though they weren't of the Fraser clan.
Across the windy street stood row upon row of Vietnamese Australians, former refugees welcomed to Australia by Malcolm Fraser when he was prime minister; their children, too.
"Rest in peace our father and saviour," read one of the banners they held. "Farewell to our champion of humanity."
The old Country Party warrior and long-time friend Peter Nixon recited the story of the hard political years and the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975 - "the classic big man duel" - and remembered Fraser serving "compulsory potent martinis" at social evenings hosted by Malcolm and Tamie.
The senior minister of The Scots Church, Rev Douglas Robertson, his Scots burr holding the mourners in some thrall, put Mr Fraser at the centre of the Parable of the Good Samaratan, and said he and the family had debated the wisdom of using Ecclesiastes as the reading delivered by Mr Fraser's daughter, Angela Marshall, the one that speaks of "a time for everything".
It offers that there is a time for hate. The family decided there was indeed a time to hate injustice, racial inequality and poverty ... and Malcolm Fraser understood and lived the message.
The coffin was borne by the arms of family from the church, Tamie at its heel, as well as prime ministers past and present. This was a state funeral, the mighty on hand, but it was, above all, a family farewell.
