Trip #15 (2012)

THERE are some big stats to add after my three weeks in Turkey... 

Flights - four

Kilometres flown - 29,309 km

Total kilometres flown in 2012 - TBA...

Hotels - Double Tree by Hilton (Istanbul), Amethyst Hotel (Istanbul), Midi Hotel (Ankara), Peri Tower Hotel (Cappadocia), Hilton Garden Inn (Konya), Linda Hotel (Kas), Richmond Hotel (Pamukkale), Manastir Hotel (Bodrum), Grand Onder Hotel (Kusadasi), Kolin Hotel (Canakkale). 

Total hotels in 2012 - TBA...

Countries visited - One, Turkey

Total countries visited in 2012 - Eight

New countries visited - none, Turkey was a repeat
Total countries visited - 51

The Bosphorus, by boat

WE finished our Turkish adventure today with a cruise on The Bosphorus to take in the view of this metropolis from the famous stretch of water that divides Asia and Europe.

For a peaceful hour we followed the curves of the coast, looking at the elegant old houses that line the shore, and keeping clear of the ships making for the Black Sea which was only a few kilometres from where we were sailing.

We noticed that all the ships were sailing in one direction, towards the Black Sea, and our guide for the cruise told us that was because each 24-hour day was divided into two blocks to ensure the safety of the maritime traffic.

It seems The Bosphours – which links with the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles to form the Turkish Strait – is the “world’s narrowest strait for international navigation’’ and desperate times call for desperate measures.

When the ships are allowed to sail in every direction at the same time there are too many accidents, with some prangs so severe that the damaged ships sailed into the shore crashing into the expensive houses that line the coast.

So, for 12 hours a day, the ships sail in one direction, and for the next 12 hours they go in the other.

After much consideration the Turkish government decided it was cheaper to pay the ship’s owners to have their vessels anchored in the shadows of Istanbul or the protected water of the Black Sea, waiting for the necessary block to open they need than it is to clean up the damage after a bingle.

Sacred ground

ON April 25, 1915, the first young Australian waded ashore at Gallipoli to begin what became one of the greatest episodes in our military history.

The first to go ashore were four infantry battalions from the 3^rd Brigade, First Australian Division – the West Australian, South Australians, Tasmanians and Queenslanders Charles Bean described as coming from the "outer states" – with these troopers sent to drive the Turkish soldiers into the hills and cover the main force as it headed for the beach in a swarm of landing craft.

These men wished a flat beach with lots of cover, but what they found was a narrow patch of sand with the steep hills of the Gallipoli Peninsula almost meeting the waterline and they were fighting for their lives as soon as they left the rowing boats.

But this was more than one battle in one war, it was the event that marked Australia’s baptism by fire and gave our young nation the common experience it needed to become a true federation.

"This significant April occasion allows every one of us to focus with pride on the qualities that we see as uniquely Australian, the same noble traits that our soldiers showed as they slogged ashore in Turkey on that first Anzac Day 90 years ago," I wrote in The Courier-Mail on April 25, 2005.

"Our troops, under the most adverse conditions, refused to give in even though the cause seemed hopeless. They stuck by their mates, relying on a dry sense of humour and a healthy irreverence for authority.


"These fine men – subsisting in holes in the ground and suffering terribly with lice, crippling illness and a woefully limited died – were nevertheless buoyant about their situation, showing resilience and ingenuity, stoicism and self-respect."

The first two men to die were from Western Australia – Captain William Annear from Subiaco, and Lieutenant Mordaunt Reid from Coolgardie – with the young Australians cut down in the shadows of a peak that would become known to everyone on the ground as Ari Burnu.

Almost a century after Annear and Reid, and 620 other Australians, died on that first day of the Gallipoli campaign I stood on this sacred soil and finally – after more than 20 years studying this infamous episode in our history – saw with my own eyes what they saw on that April day in 1915.

The point below Ari Burnu is now a cemetery, with 253 allied graves and a wall crowned by a cross that looks across the headstones to the patch of sea where the Anzac fleet anchored during the months of our first Great War campaign.

"Until 2000 Ari Burnu Cemetery has been the site of the Anzac Day Dawn Service," Gallipoli and the Anzacs explained.

"The cemetery was begun during the campaign (and) among the 182 Australian graves are 82 of men from the Australian Light Horse regiments.
"The first row of graves above the sea wall contains mostly soldiers of the 8th Light Horse from Western Victoria (and) their date of death tells their story – August 7, 1915, the morning of the charge of the 8th and 10th Light Horse (Western Australia) at the Nek."

It wasn’t the only Anzac cemetery I visited today, with every graveyard occupying an notorious landmark where Australian and New Zealand soldiers fought the deadliest battles of that eight-month campaign.

Lone Pine, the site of some of the fiercest fighting, was named after the single pine tree the Australians saw growing on the hill as they struggled up from Anzac Cover on April 25.

"From that date through to August there was much heavy fighting at Lone Pine," the website noted.

"The rear of the cemetery today marking where the Anzac lines were during those months and the wall, and pylon of the Lone Pine Memorial to the Missing marking the region of the Turkish trenches, (and) the burials and commemorations in Lone Pine represent virtually every phase of the campaign in the Anzac area between the April landing and the December evacuation."

Some 72 graves mark the final resting place of men killed during the Battle of the Landings, clashes that happened between April 25 and May 3, while most of the headstones identify men killed during the August Offensive which took place four months after the first landings.

The last Australian buried there was Sergeant Edward Grice, from the 24^th Battalion, who was killed in action on December 18 just hours before the evacuation that look the Anzacs off Gallipoli on the early hours of December 20.

There isn’t much left of the Lone Pine battlefield, but if you know where to look you can walk in the depressions that were once the Australian trenches on the ridge above Anzac Cove.

Corporal John Wadeson from the 7^th Battalion wrote about the battle he fought in these tranches on the night of August 7, 1915, and as I wandered through the scrub I couldn’t help thinking that the soil was a rusty red colour because of all the blood that washed across that hill during the August Offensive.

"We had a full hand dealt us when we were given the trenches won at Lonesome Pine on August 7," the Great War soldier wrote in his diary after the fight.

"We held it all that Red Sunday, it cost us something like 400 casualties, he trenches were something awful as the dead of both Australians and Turks were still in them, and mixed up in all kinds of positions. 

"But when things cooled off a little, burial parties were going solidly getting the awful litter away.

"Sometimes, when the attack was solid, our dead in the bottom of the trenches, all huddled up in heaps, and it was with difficulty that fresh men could pass to take up their posts."

I only spent a few hours exploring Australia’s Gallipoli battlefields – The Nek, Baby 700, Chunuk Bair, The Sphinx, Hill 60 – but I have a greater appreciation for the suffering our soldiers endured as they tried to capture a peninsula that would give the allies access to Constantinople and, ultimately, the Black Sea.

And tonight I feel like a pilgrim that’s been to a very holy place, just as a Muslim might after seeing Mecca or a catholic after attending a mass said by the Pope at The Vatican. 

Sound and light show

IN all the time I've spent peering through the lens of a camera there's still a couple of techniques I haven't mastered, and they all involve dark nights and subtle light.

I really want to capture the beams of light pushing through a narrow window into a dark room, I'm set on shooting a busy city at night with long lines of red from departing tail lights marking the movement of traffic, and I'm really keen on photographing lightening.

I was given another chance tonight, after that dramatic Mediterranean sunset, when storm clouds began brewing on the horizon and a couple of cells developing right in front of my Kusadasi balcony.

After wrestling with the manual settings for an hour or so, and finding safe places to rest the camera while the shutter was open for minutes at a time, I managed to snap a couple of dozen shots with some lightning in the background.

These were the best three, what do you think?

 

Kusadasi sunset

It's October in Turkey, which would typically mean the weather was cooling down and giving the locals a breather after a steamy summer, but the autumn days on the Mediterranean are still hot with lots of blue sky crowning those magic water views.

Another advantage of these glorious days are perfect sunsets, and we had one this afternoon.

Not a bad way to spend a lazy day in Turkey, sitting on the balcony with a cool drink watching the sun dive for the mountains.

Cotton on

THINK you’ve had a hard day at the office?

Imagine harvesting a field of cotton by hand.

We have seen lots of cotton during the past few days on the road, and most of it’s being harvested by big tractors that spit the fluffy white balls into oversized bins, but this was the first time we saw it being done by hand.

These three ladies were working in a field halfway between Pamukkale and Kusadasi, under the blazing sun on a hot October day, and there wasn’t a man in sight.

But that’s not unusual for Turkey and there was a better-than-average chance their brothers, fathers and sons had their feet up at the local tea shop while the women folk did the back-breaking work to bring the money in.

 

Becalmed in Bodrum

 

ANOTHER day, and night, in Turkey with nothing much to do but enjoy the changing colours of a Mediterranean settlement.

We're in Bodrum, another seaside spot set on the sands of the Agean Coast, and with a cruise ship in port I decided the best place to be was on the balcony of the hotel doing nothing more energetic than lifting the camera to snap a few pics.