Gallipoli

Exciting, inspiring, spine tingling, sad, patriotic, these are just some of the words I could use to explain the feeling of being in Gallipoli for the ANZAC day dawn service. This is a must do for all Australians and New Zealanders and it went a little something like this. Off to bed early on the 23^rd, up at 6am, bus to Troy at 7am, ferry across the Dardenelles at 10am, supermarket for supplies at 11am, arrive at 1pm, wait at the gates until 6pm (my least favourite part as some people or groups, cough fanatics cough, were getting pushy), reserve your own patch of grass at 6:30pm, eat, chat, take photos, walk around, try and get on TV until 9pm, listen and watch some speeches, documentaries until 11pm, fall asleep to Julia Gillard’s pre-recorded speech at 11:30pm, wake up at 1am and realise you forgot about the existence of dew and find your sleeping bag all wet, dry it off with a towel and fall back to sleep, be abruptly woken up by an orchestra enhanced by speakers playing a rendition of the invasion at 2am (they should warn people with heart problems of that one), go for a walk and eat a kebab until 3am, sleep until 5am until woken up to pack up your gear, including getting out of your sleeping bag, even though its minus 2 and the coldest ANZAC night for 10 years, dawn service and spine tingling at 6am. How the rest of the day goes well you’ll just have to do it for yourself.