Back to ANZAC cove

This is what we have all been looking forward to. Our experience of the commemorative service was so surreal that we needed to make it more concrete with the sharing of stories and viewing of the environments and situations the soldiers were exposed to. Keith Doolan, our historian, was the very person that was able to clearly express this through his passion for military history and the Gallipoli campaign.

 "V Beach" cemetery.

 The Sphinx was named by the soldiers as it was much the same in representation to the one they had previously seen in Egypt

 ANZAC beach

 Shrapnel Valley also the destination of our own personal commemorative service to end our time amongst the spirits of 'the boys'.

 view from pugges

 Pill box

 Beach Cemetery 

 A celebrity surprise at the end of the day while crossing the Dardanelles by ferry.

Tuesday 28th April

Beginning to tour the ANZAC battlefields with Keith bringing the stories to life as we move around the remains of  past battles.

Monday 27th April

Our day began with a ferry ride across the Dardanelles. We began looking at areas associated with the Gallipoli campaign, viewing cemetries and monuments of both Turkish and ANZAC origin. Keith our historian shared many stories outlining successes and failures getting a glimpse of life would have been like in the trenches.
Our movement amongst the headstones makes us realise how lucky we are to have the freedom we have today.

Sunday the 26th April.

After a bit of a sleep in we boarded the bus to make our way to Troy. Here we experienced local cuisine at a restaurant of an author who signed his books on Gallipoli and Troy for us.
We viewed the wooden horse of Troy and some ancient ruins of the city and an opportunity to take our first group photo.

From here we chose to take another toon is to the town / city of Assos. Here we walked up the hill through the traditional road side markets to enter the ruins of an ancient temple with fabulous views of the country of Greece across the water.

 back to the gorgeous sunset at Cannakkal.

Friday 24th of April

Our day begins with the journey of a trip to 5h the ANZAC Cove. On arrival we joined the end of a snaking line of buses that took 4hrs to get to it's first registration station. Here we were to check that the ballot for tickets and passport receiving a wrist band to confirm that they were right. Continuing on we Reached our second destination where we disembarked from the bus to walk a short distance up the road to catch a shuttle to be transfered to the website of the commemoration ceremony. Once here we had to compete with Thousands of other aussies who had already arrived and made Themselves comfy by lying out across the grass and taking up huge amounts of space. Eventually over 10,000 of us were manoeuvered around so that all people had a seat of some kind. 
The ceremony consısted of various forms of entertainment, from, bands and singing to traditional Aboriginal cultural presentations and New Zealand. A short film called the 'telegram messenger' was shown to put us into the right head space in apprecfiating the fact that we now have our freedom due to the selfless actions of defense of all a rmed forces across the last 100 years and still continue to do so ..

ANZAC Day

The dawn service began at 5.30am. The silence that fell across a crowd of over 10,000 pilgrims was amazing. The silence was broken by the sound of the waves crashing along the beach quietly. It was really quite errie.

At the completion of this service we divided ourselves into the Aussies and New Zealanders to attend the appropriati location of either Lone Pine or Chunuk Bair. This service beg that about 12pm and was a little less formal with people being able to share with them the stories and items of Gallipoli. The elderly gentleman from our bus group had being carried with him a 100 year old original map of Gallipoli feeling that belonged to father inlaw.
This memorable day ended up being 36 hrs long beginning with our arrival on the 24th. There was very little food or drink supplied throughout the day and everyone was beginniing to get a little frustrated.  We finally got back to our accommodation, in Cannakkal, at 11pm on the 25th and were told that there was a meal waiting in the dining room.