and a mate went out to our local supermarket one morning, just up the road from our hotel, and bumped into three
or four Aussies who gave me some weird looks, and it was only later that I realised they were actually primary school
friends of Tom’s!
Canakkale & Gallipoli
Our next main stop was one which I was very excited for, Turkey. Our trip there went via another night in Athens and
another in Kavala, also in Greece, both of which were pretty uneventful from memory. Our first Turkish destination
was a place called Canakkale, which was just around the corner from Gallipoli. Despite having loved history since I
was a kid, I never quite caught on to modern history. With hindsight I would probably attribute to a combination of
the necessity of having to remember exact dates, compared to being able to say “circa 1000BC” in ancient history
and still be right even if you were off by 100 years (something that isn’t quite as acceptable in modern history), and
the fact that my ancient history teacher was a lot more informed and passionate than my modern history teacher. As
such I would have to say I never really had that great an appreciation for Australian war history, so didn’t really
expect much to come out of visiting ANZAC Cove and the rest of Gallipoli. Needless to say I was for want of a better
word, pleasantly surprised at just how much of an impact visiting the memorial sites had on me.
Our tour manager was a kiwi himself, and at least ¾ of our tour would have been either Australians or New
Zealanders, so it was seen as a pretty important stop on our trip. Whether the purpose of it was to inform the few
Canadians with us as to what the significance of the area was, or to give a quick refresher to all the Aussies and Kiwis
I’m not quite sure, but the speech that our tour manager gave as we entered the area was one of the most stirring
I’ve heard in a long time. For him to have a quick talk before entering a new city or country was the norm for our
trip, and usually his speech would be filled with jokes and would end up being quite hard to hear over the chaos of
the bus. This speech was different however, with the address being met by a stunning silence as everyone took in
what he was saying, and there were a lot of moist eyes by the end of it. Without a doubt it was the quietest day of
the trip, with everyone choosing to more or less keep to themselves while they tried to fathom the difficulties faced
by the troops from both sides of the Tasman. Although I perhaps didn’t quite appreciate the entire difficulty of the
situation the troops were faced with, I did know the general history of the war prior to going in. But one thing I
would never have guessed was the current Turkish standpoint on the battle