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Published: April 27th 2007
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Well the trip to Gallipoli has been and gone and only now are we starting to recover, from both the experience and the exhaustion. We rocked up to Cannakale (via Troy, where there is very little left), where we ferried across to Eceabat, our base for Gallipoli. It was only later that we realised we had crossed from Asia into Europe! A bit of an anti-climax really! But we setup camp and had dinner outside the Boomerang Bar with the rest of the Overland tours, and got to know them a bit.
The next day we were up early to get our tour of Anzac Cove and the rest of the Peninsula. It was quite surreal as it is a very Mediterranean setting and anywhere else this would be a resort. It is very hard to imagine such carnage-filled battles taking place where you stood 92 years ago. There are only a few physical reminders, bar the memorials, which are the remainder of the trenches and a few scattered human bones, which our guide reckoned were Turkish, because their soldiers were only buried in mass graves. The graves were also quite shocking reading the ages of the 'men' who
Graves before Anzac Cove
The ones who dıed at the fırst landıng died. There were alot of 18-19 year olds, and the youngest soldier who died was 14 years old.
We also went via Lone Pine (Oz Memorial), Chunuk Bair (NZ Memorial), the Turkish one and the museum. I was well aware that Leah and Hannah were in town as well, but as yet I hadn't spotted them despite looking everywhere. We had a few hours back at the hostel before we headed into Anzac Cove, where we would be staying the night before the Dawn service. I was really looking forward to this, and with the added bonus of catching up with Hannah and Leah. After getting a cool gift bag going in, I caught up with Leah and it was quite unreal standing catching up with her overlooking Anzac Cove on the Turkish Coast! After that I ran into Hannah and it turned out she was only 4 rows in front of me! What are the odds in amongst 10,000 odd people?!? So I spent a couple of hours of the night catching up with her aswell.
Over the night, what they do to keep everyone awake just as they start to fall asleep, or as they call
Anzac Cove
Where the landıng happened it, is play videos of Anzac documentaries to help with the remembrance. So I got about 15 minutes sleep over the night, about the same as everyone else. It didn't help we were in normal stadium seats or that it was freezing even with thermals either, but we saw the Prime Minister's message at midnight and watched the sky get lighter and lighter with the rising sun.
The dawn service started on an eerie note as they read out victims of the fighting, what they died from, their age and their profession back home, which started the shivers down the spine. What followed were the speeches and anthems, then I doubt there was a dry eye in the house as the Last Post rang out across Anzac Cove as the sun broke over the horizon.
After the dawn service finished, the Aussies headed to Lone Pine to their individual memorial and I went up to Chunuk Bair ready for the Kiwi one several hours later with the intention of grabbing some well needed sleep, but ran into Leah and sat with her for a couple of hours before we caught up with Hannah again and it was just
Ataturk's speech
And the reason why Anzac's are stıll welcomed so well ın Turkey like old times. I grabbed 30 mins sleep before the NZ service, which was pretty good, but didn't beat the dawn service.
Then it was back to the hostel for a shower and there I learnt Sri Lanka had sealed our fate and won the semi-final in the cricket, and people who saw my face thought someone had died. I was hugely disappointed, but still congratulations to Flem and the boys on the effort to get this far. The afternoon it was back down to the Boomerang Bar, where we had fun (some of us too much...), but most of us were to exhausted, especially considering the other groups had already piked and gone to bed, and were home around 12.
The following day was our final day for the trip and the road to Istanbul. I think all of us are semi-looking forward to that, if only for the fact we will get the chance to sleep-in! As some people know, I can store sleep, but even I am running low on stocks after the past few weeks!
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Hanz
Hannah Andrew
Traitor!
Leah! How could you!! I thought you were on my side! James when you said you brought them to ANZAC as well, I thought you were joking! .. I’m lucky I didn’t have a sleeping bag or pillow! Those togs will have travelled more around the world than me! I just can’t believe it!!!