Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 509
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[Page 509]
(39)
complete with driver at our disposal to enable us to cross the Narrows, get on the Land Rover, and visit the eighteen Australian cemeteries scattered over the middle of the peninsular: Bill's main objective being to find the grave of his eldest brother.
After a few days of the usual sightseeing in Istanbul we flew down to Chanakkale in a small DC4 plane, the flight time being exactly an hour. We put up for the weekend at a rather graceless small hotell, the only residential one in this garrison town. It was not convenient for our being taken over to the Peninsular until the Monday, so we spent most of the Sunday visiting the site of ancient Troy, only twenty miles to the south, by taxi. We were the only visitors and it was more romantic than exciting to be clambering around the excavated remains of the five successive small cities built there in ancient days. It was interesting to note that the sea that had washed the defensive walls of the old city had now receded to a shallow little bay about three miles away.
On arriving on the Peninsular the next morning, our first duty was to proceed to headquarters of the Turkish garrison on Gaba Tepe (the high point at the south end of Anzac Cove) and pick up a soldier who was to see that we did not stray into forbidden places or take prohibited photos, the whole area being one of maximum military security.
Except for the cemeteries and the cleared tracks between them, the precipitous scrub-covered hills and deep gullies rising from the sandy beach at Anzac Cove (Turkish Ari Burnu) looked absolutely the same as when we landed there forty five years previously. Quite useless uninhabited country, still the home of wolves and wild pigs and still in its primeval state as it probably would be for centuries to come. Our old trenches though filled with dead leaves could still be traced and I had no difficulty in identifying the spot where I was shot down in front of "Quinns Post": there it was, exactly like the image that had remained in my mind all through the years.