Day 106 - Gallipoli

Çanakkale - Anzac Hotel

The morning was spent visiting the remains of the ancient city of Troy, and it was good to see that the replica Trojan Horse at the site looked much more like the one that the Chaser used in their show, plus you can climb this one. Of course, whether or not there really was a Trojan Horse is an open question, there is certainly no evidence of one at Troy. The Troy tour was quite short, there isn’t that much to see as it was completely underground when first discovered, but interesting nevertheless.

In the afternoon we joined a tour of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and given the amount of Australians around, we might as well have been back home, though there were also some Americans and Danish on our tour, who of course had never even heard of Gallipoli before.

Our guide was very good, providing excellent explanations of the background to the campaign, the various troop movements and tactics, the key events, the numbers of people killed, interesting stories about some of the soldiers and events, and much more.

We saw all of the sites relevant to Australia, New Zealand and Turkey – Anzac Cove, Shrapnel Valley, Lone Pine, etc. We also visited a number of cemeteries and memorials, where key participants (like John Simpson) were pointed out to us.

Lone Pine

  We found it very interesting  how important the site is to the Turkish, something we have no idea of back home. Although there were of course a lot of Australians and New Zealanders there, when we reached the Turkish memorials there were a lot more locals there, of all ages. The Turkish commander of the campaign, Mustafa Kemal, became a national hero and eventually became Atatürk – “the Father of Turkey”, so the Turkish say that their republic was born at Gallipoli.