Gallipoli: The one trip every Aussie should make

EVERY Aussie thinks they know this story. But there’s one truth that you can really only understand by being there.

It’s a pilgrimage that more than 10,000 Australians will make this week. One hundred years since the Anzacs first set foot on the shore, a trip to Gallipoli is revelatory, but not in the way you might expect.

Australian crowds will pour into the Turkish peninsula this week, along with Princes Charles and Harry, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The journey to Gallipoli is an experience in itself. Leaving from Istanbul — which presents an intoxicating mix of the remnants of ancient civilisations and the encroaching Westernised world — the billboards and high-rises dissipate into an expanse of rambling hills and valleys of farmland. The shortest route, which takes about four hours’ drive, winds you through villages where the dogs, chooks and tractors hold right of way over blow-ins in hire cars, which have their suspensions tested mightily by the pot-holed roads. The dull grey and brown houses you pass are either in a constant state of renovation, or simply unfinished. However, no matter how small the town, a grand mosque — complete with elaborate domes and intricate minarets — always takes pride of place. AUSSIES MAKE PILGRIMAGE TO BATTLEFIELDS AROUND THE WORLD After a right-hand turn, acres of seemingly worthless scrub lead to what has become sacred ground for Australians and New Zealanders. The main celebration on Saturday — an exclusive event that only 8120 Australians won tickets to — will be held at the Anzac Commemorative Site at North Beach, near Ari Burnu Cemetery. Most of the bus-loads of Australians who came for an early look at Gallipoli today focused their attention on these two landmarks, but the Anzac story actually began a little further south. When people think of the Gallipoli landing, they think of the beach. And just around the corner from the commemorative site is Anzac Cove. It is here at 4.30am on April 25, 1915, that the Anzacs first landed at Gallipoli. It’s a place lives large in Australian folklore, but to see it in the flesh isn’t so much insightful as chilling. Put simply, it’s an unremarkable stretch of beach, pebbly rather than sandy, and peppered with blobs of jellyfish. There is a 3m retaining wall that has been built to slow the erosion that threatens to wipe the beach out altogether. The water here is a deep, clear blue and the only sound is of the gentle water lapping at the shoreline incessantly, much as it would have done a century ago. A light wind blows and the sun is beaming and inviting. It’s still, peaceful. Beautiful even. But this modest stretch of beach fails to offer insights into why this tale lives so large in the Australian psyche. When you’re here, your eyes aren’t drawn to the water or the shore. Your gaze is inexorably drawn somewhere else: up. It’s not the beach, but the cliffs that leave the lasting impression. It’s only when you stand on the shore that you can truly appreciate the magnitude of the task that was laid at the feet of the first Anzacs. As you look up, you see a withering expanse of steep cliffs, razorback ridges, impossible hills and deep ravines. The geography seems insurmountable, but tackling this unforgiving landscape was exactly what these men were sent halfway across the world to do. And to know that there were thousands of Turks staring down at them, you really appreciate just how much the odds were stacked against the Anzacs. After seeing Gallipoli for the first time, I now understand why this is a pilgrimage every Australian should make. But not for the reasons you may assume. Much of the way we define the Australian character — endurance, ingenuity, a sense of humour, larrikinism and mateship — was mythologised here. But being here doesn’t so much illuminate that idea as reinforce another: that Gallipoli was a bloody, pointless operation, flawed from the start and doomed to failure. Seeing the foreboding landscape up close brings into sharp focus the well-documented tactical blunders that sent thousands to their premature deaths; and underlines the waste and sheer futility of the eight-month battle. For what? It’s only through being here that this truth can be hammered home. And it’s one we should never forget.

Originally published as Gallipoli: The one trip every Aussie should make