Geographical - A special Anzac reflection

Chapter 36: Gallipoli: A bit of Aussie pride

EVEN the rowdiest young Australian could be hushed by the emotional experience of Gallipoli on Anzac Day.

The crowd of thousands of Australians, New Zealanders and a handful of Turks (mostly officials) are silenced just before the dawn service. Everyone rubs his or her sleepy eyes. 

Most of the group hasn’t slept since arriving at Anzac Cove the evening before.

I know I vaguely slept. It was a mixture between anticipation of the huge day that lay before me and possibly the discomfort of sleeping on the ground that kept my eyes open for the majority of the night. It would have been low for me to complain of discomfort however, seeing as our forefathers fighting for Australia and New Zealand had it much, much worse. They didn’t just have the cold, they had the added factor of the threat of death, not just from opposing soldiers, but also from disease and severe weather conditions.

We arrived at Anzac Cove about 5pm yesterday. We were supposed to arrive an hour earlier and have a tour of the trenches but the Australian Governor Quentin Bryce was to be a speaker at the dawn service so being the VIP she was, the area had to be scouted.

Like pack horses with all our night and next day’s supplies on our backs, we wandered through the grounds which was only the size of perhaps one and a half basketball courts flanked by small bleachers or grandstands. We noted the many already sleeping bag-clad people who looked like glow-worms sprawled across the Anzac Cove site.

My five mates and I located our prime position. Making people squeeze further together we somehow managed to fit in, although we definitely did resemble colourful sardines. The colours were mostly green and gold, with a little bit of black and white from the Kiwi contingent.

We enjoyed a joyous little picnic for dinner inclusive of olives, ham, cheese, fresh bread and savoury biscuits shaped like little fish, and settled in for a long, cold night.

It was a cold night!  Thankfully I didn’t really notice because I’d purchased a ski jacket from the internet prior and had a deliciously warm sleeping bag. I felt sorry for a girl who had only just decided to go on the trip. She had just two light blankets stolen from her plane trip to Istanbul.

Throughout the night documentaries were played letting those souls a wee bit ignorant of the history behind Anzac Day, catch up on why it’s commemorated. Slides were shown with pictures of some of the soldiers, with their hometown, battalion and age listed.

I gasped as one slide showed a soldier who had died and was just 15-years-old. I remember when I was 15, I was busy enjoying home economics at school, touch football, trying to get into plays and convincing dad, to no avail, to let me get a job.

Breaking up the mood of the sombre evening, The Australian Navy band played songs including That’s why they call him the Anzac which pulled on our heart strings as I and probably a lot of my mates were already emotional. The only thing that ruined the event, was how vocal the Turkish sales people were in the food stall areas of the site.

“CHICKEN KEBAB!!! SOUP! COFFEE!!!!” they’d scream at us. “I’M not hungry!” I felt like screaming back before giving them a piece of mind about how their yelling seemed to disrespect the sacredness of the day.

I became quite delirious as we all tried to get some sleep. About 1am I joked to my friend proposing the hypothetical of what if The Last Post was played to mark the beginning of the dawn service and someone yelled disrespectfully in a bogan voice, “SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!” This of course sent us into further fits of inappropriate giggling at just the naughtiness of the concept.

I managed to get a little bit of sleep in between commenting on the people lying around us about whether they’d be a “little spoon” or “big spoon”.

About 4am the highly anticipated dawn service began after the master of ceremonies gently urged everyone to wake and sit up. We could hear the sea moving in and out of the cove and splashing against the shoreline – the same shoreline where Aussies and Kiwis had arrived in 1915. A New Zealand call out in Maori opened the ceremony echoing throughout the rocky landscape behind us and was followed by the traditional service you’d experience in Australia.

I had to keep blinking to make sure I was actually experiencing Anzac Day in Gallipoli, something that should be on every Aussie and Kiwi’s “to-do-list”.  

Overcome with exhaustion, I didn’t feel much at the Dawn Service but when we trekked to Lone Pine for the Australian Service, it set in that I was actually at Anzac Cove.

It was basically when my friend and I were practically shouting the song We are one that we seemed to break down simultaneously. We were also some of the only ones, apart from the official group, that knew the second verse of the National Anthem. We were just proud Aussies.

After the Lone Pine service we made the up-hill trek to the Turkish and New Zealand services. Along the way we observed trenches and graves, trying to soak in as much information as we could.

The Turkish service was like a massive party - so joyous. I took a photo of a group of young schoolboys linked arm in arm. I thought: what an awesome representation of how much the Turkish people respect what happened in the First World War and the respect held for our soldiers.

We are now sat on the bus exhausted and are grateful to be headed to a hotel for a good night’s sleep.  

Of all the emotions I felt today including exhaustion, sadness and privilege of having been given such insight into our history, the strongest emotion I’ve felt is definitely pride. 

We make a brief stop at a shop and our tour guide disappears before reappearing with slab of beers.

Being Aussie – I’ll drink to that.