Places to visit in Gallipoli Peninsula National Park

     On the Gallipoli Peninsula today are 31 war cemeteries, 21 of which are in the Anzac area. There are a number of memorials to the missing, the largest of which are the Helles Memorial and the Lone Pine Memorial. On Chunuk Bair there is also the New Zealand National Memorial. This is a battle memorial to the New Zealand soldiers who served on Gallipoli.

     The Gallipoli cemeteries contain 22,000 graves. However, only 9,000 of these are of identified burials with grave markers. Where it is known that a soldier is buried in a particular cemetery but his grave could not be definitely established, he is commemorated in that cemetery by what is termed a 'special memorial'. The British and Dominion 'missing' - approximately 27,000 men - are commemorated by name on five memorials - Helles (British, Australian, Indian), Lone Pine (Australian and New Zealand), Twelve Tree Copse, Hill 60 and Chunuk Bair (New Zealand).

     Instructions to guide you from the first point (1) on the walk at North Beach to the last (14) high up on Walker's Ridge from which you can look back on your starting point hundreds of metres below and Historical information relevant to each stopping point.

     1.North Beach: Your Anzac Walk begins at the Anzac Commemorative Site at North Beach. Move to the inscription 'Anzac' on the wall above the beach. Now turn and look at the remarkable landscape around you taking in the ridge above.

     2.Ari Burnu: From the Anzac Commemorative Site walk back up to the road. Turn right and walk for about a quarter of a kilometre to Ari Burnu Cemetery at the head of the bay. The cemetery is to the right off the road and down an approach path. Go through the cemetery to Ari Burnu point and look out to sea.

     3.Anzac Cove: From Ari Burnu point walk back through the cemetery to the road. Notice to your right here the Turkish memorial. On it are words sent in 1934 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey, to an official Australian, New Zealand and British party visiting Anzac Cove:

Those heroes that shed their blood, and lost their lives ...
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country
Therefore, rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side,
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries ...
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
Become our sons as well.

     4.Hell Spit: From the 'Anzac Cove' sign make your way along the coastal path to Beach Cemetery. Walk through the cemetery and look out to sea. The Anzacs gave the name Hell Spit to this area, the southern point of Anzac Cove. On a clear day you will have directly in front of you the Turkish island of Imroz (Imbros in 1915, as it was largely a Greek island then) and off to the north-west the Greek island of Samothrace. It was on Samothrace that pieces of a statue of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory, were discovered. The pieces were reassembled and today form one of the most famous sights of the Louvre Museum in Paris - the headless Winged Victory of Samothrace. Ari Burnu point and look out to sea.

     5.Shrapnel Valley: Leave Hell Spit by walking back through Beach Cemetery and to the unpaved road. Turn right and keep going until you meet the main paved road. Turn left back towards Anzac Cove and walk along for a few metres. You will see a sign for Shrapnel Valley Cemetery. Turn right down the track until you arrive at the cemetery and then walk through it and look up the valley.
     Shrapnel Valley was the main route up from the beach area to the Anzac frontline on the ridge you can see in the distance. Up there were the famous posts - Quinn's, Courtney's and Steele's Posts which you will reach later in the walk. Further along the valley splits in two. Off to the right, behind the posts, runs Monash Valley called after Brigadier General John Monash, commander of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade.

     6.Brighton Beach: From Shrapnel Valley Cemetery go back to the main beach road. Turn left and walk along this road for about half a kilometre. Ahead of you will be the promontory of Gaba Tepe and to your right the shore known to the Anzacs as Brighton Beach named after the beach of the same name east of Melbourne.

     7.Artillery Road: About half a kilometre along the Brighton Beach road, on the left, is a directional brown and yellow sign. It points up an unpaved road - Artillery Road as it was known to the Anzacs - to Shell Green Cemetery. Follow this road uphill, stopping at Shell Green, to Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial. As you come through a small area of pines at the end of the road, you will find the entry to Lone Pine off up to your right.

     8.Lone Pine: At the end of Artillery Road you will reach what was known as 400 Plateau or simply Lone Pine. You are now on Second Ridge. The path lies through pine trees and out into an open area. Turn right, and walk to the entrance of Lone Pine Cemetery. Once inside, turn left and make your way through the cemetery, go up a small flight of steps and cross to the Lone Pine Memorial. From the memorial there is a magnificent view in all directions. To the south-west, to your right, you can see the sweep of Bolton's Ridge leading down to the sea and beyond the promontory of Gaba Tepe. Looking south, across the flat valley, through which you most likely came to reach Anzac from Eceabat, the land rises again to the hump of Achi Baba in the middle distance. From there, the land falls away to the tip of the peninsula at Helles where the British landings took place on 25 April 1915.
     Looking left, back to the east across the valley, you will see the long low rise of Third or Gun Ridge. Throughout the campaign this was behind the Turkish lines although a few Anzacs reached it on 25 April 1915. Looking north-east, Second and Third Ridge merge in the near distance and the slope rises up across Battleship Hill and then more steeply to Chunuk Bair. On that height is the New Zealand Memorial.
     Look up to the road outside the cemetery. It bends away from here along Second Ridge past smaller cemeteries that you can pick out in this order - Johnston's Jolly, Courtney's and Steel's Post and Quinn's Post. The Anzac trenches ran along this narrow ridge to the left of the road while the Turkish line was just metres away on the other side.

     9.Johnston's Jolly: Go back out of Lone Pine Cemetery and walk down to the main road heading along up the ridge. Turn left and walk to Johnston's Jolly Cemetery a few hundred metres along the road and to your right. If you had stood here on the morning of 19 May 1915 you would have been surrounded by death. To the Turks this place was Kirmizi Sirt, Crimson Slope.

     10.Quinn's Post: Leave Johnston's Jolly Cemetery and turn right. Head up the road past Courtney's and Steele's Post Cemetery until you reach Quinn's Post Cemetery which will be on your left. Quinn's was named after Major Hugh Quinn, 15th Battalion, of Charters Towers, Queensland. Enter the cemetery and find a position where you can look back down to the sea along Monash and Shrapnel Valleys.

     11.Turkish Memorial: Leave Quinn's Post Cemetery and go back to the road. Turn left and proceed up the hill until you reach the large statue of a Turkish soldier on your left.

     12.TheNek: After leaving the Turkish Soldiers Memorial turn left and head up the paved road past the 57th Regiment Memorial on your right until you come to a fork in the road. The paved road leads up to Chunuk Bair but you should turn down left along the unpaved road. Following this road you will pass a Turkish memorial (Sergeant Mehmet's Memorial) on your right and soon to your right will be the Nek Cemetery. Enter the cemetery and make for the special memorial headstones to your right in front of the cemetery cross.

     13.Walker's Ridge: Leave the Nek Cemetery and turn right down the track until you reach Walker's Ridge Cemetery. From the cemetery observe the view to the north. Below, and to your right, are the valleys and spurs leading back up to Koja Temen Tepe and Chunuk Bair. Straight ahead are the Suvla Plains with, in the distance, the long mountain ridge of Kirech Tepe. If you let your eye follow the curving sweep of Ocean Beach it will come to a point - Nibrunesi Point. Between there and another point to the north lies Suvla Bay. A 'cut' in the bay across the sand leads into the Salt Lake. This whole area witnessed a great deal of fighting during the August Offensive in 1915. During that month a last great effort was made to break out of Anzac, capture the heights of Chunuk Bair and bring the campaign to a successful end.

     14.Overlooking North Beach: Leave Walker's Ridge Cemetery and turn right down the track to the end of the ridge. Be careful here! There are no fences and the drop is almost sheer down to the gully below. Ahead of you the view is back down to where you began your 'Anzac Walk' at North Beach and the Anzac Commemorative Site.