State Library of NSW
[Page 611]
the commencement of gum trees, (saw no eucalyptus), some flowering creepers which at once suggest our false sarsaparilla. None of them has a very tight hold in the ground. The hills rise to 300 feet or more at special places. Where their sea fronts are almost perpendicular there is no growth of shrubs.
On the 25th of April in is natural condition it was of course far different from today. Then there had been but little traffic upon it. To essay the task of climbing the hill sides on the morning of the 25th of April was a feat which few men in the world would have undertaken at the orders of any man, and to have accomplish it was a task only possible to active, strong, determined, well trained conditioned men. And when the climbing had to be done in the face of an enemy armed with guns of any kind, let alone magazine rifles and machine guns was an accomplishment that places those who did it in the ranks of heroes. Ground too it was absolutely unknown to almost every man who climbed it. Just think that as the soldiers got to the sea shore they were being shot at to wounds and death, that they jumped into the water waded ashore and then holding on to these bushes they mounted higher and higher? Tell him who says that the Australian blows about it, that if he does, he has a worthy subject, and to class the episode as amongst the greatest in the annals of war, ancient or modern, must be correct. In the doing of it too he broke all the dicta that have been laid
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