Since I last blogged, we finished our 9 day OB at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, had a few days back in the office; before jumping on a plane and heading towards the volcanic ash cloud; stopping short of it in Istanbul Turkey; where we headed out to the Gallipoli Peninsular to cover the 95th anniversary of ANZAC day… It’s something I have always dreamed about doing (on my bucket list), and finally my dream came true… Arriving in Istanbul on Monday, we overnighted there before being driven down to Eceabat, which is about 20 minutes from Anzac cove on the western side of the Gallipoli Peninsular… Not long after arriving at our hotel, the rest of the crew arrived (who flew in the day before) and we headed out to see Anzac cove for ourselves…
We’ll words can’t describe the feeling when I arrived at this hallowed site, where so many Australians lost their lives, in the first of the battles of WW1.
It was here I pulled out my new camera and started snapping, and kept on snapping for the rest of the week… in the 5 days, I think I took over 500 photos of the various sites and events surrounding Anzac Cove and Anzac Day. It’s a beautiful place where images are aplenty. Every where you turn there’s a shot; be it the beach; the cemetery’s and memorials, or just Aussies paying homage to the fallen.
Over the next few days we shot and interviewed Aussies that had made the pilgrimage to Gallipoli for one reason or another… Listening to their stories it emphasises why as Australian we have a deep interest in somewhere so far from our home shores.
I also took the time to lie on the grass in Beach cemetery, while the rest of the crew interviewed one of the school kids that won the Simpson prize; and tune out to everything except the sound of the waves breaking on the shores, and thinking what it might have been like for the diggers 95 years ago…
Saturday morning saw us all pack ourselves up to spend the next 30 hours at Anzac Cove in preparation for the Dawn service at 5.30am on Sunday morning; as the sun came up over “the sphinx” and those gathered at Anzac Cove… The air troubles of the previous week didn’t seem to deter anyone’s plans to be there. Those who’s flight plans got interrupted, drove days and night across Europe to get there… and the service didn’t disappoint. It was very different to the Dawn services I have previously attended in Sydney and Melbourne, but you’d expect it to be with what happened on those very shores all those years ago…
After Gallipoli, it was back to overnight in Istanbul; before an early flight to London Heathrow for a couple of weeks in London and the UK, this time though; both work and pleasure…
