Friday, 25 April 2025
Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AK KC

I acknowledge the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of the land on which we gather, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, to the Elders of all parts of this nation, and to all who have served our nation.

In a country blessed by peace then and now, when skies are more often blue than not, when the moon appears early, when our dawns are a beauteous red and gold it is fitting moment to reflect on those same things as they were 110 years ago in a different country, at a place of which few would have heard until they boarded a transport ship to take them to war.  That place was Gallipoli.

We know it was a beautiful calm night.  We know there was a bright half-moon shining.^[1] We know that in the naivety of the times for a nation that didn’t know war, that there was an expectation of something grander than the 16,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers had ever experienced.

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Rosenthal felt it in the air, as he wrote in his diary after addressing his troops before dinner and attending a church service on board the ship:

The air tonight seems electrical …

Everybody is in splendid spirit and ready for tomorrow’s momentous happenings … We can only do our best, and I am sure everybody will do that.

The excitement was shattered at 5 am next morning as reality came with the dawn.  In a letter 22-year-old Sydney Skinner, wrote home to his mother and father:^[2]

As the day broke, and the light became brighter you could just distinguish the land ahead. Along the shore were fifteen battle ships, laying grim, and silent, waiting for the shore batteries to open fire. At 5 am they opened fire on us – shrapnel was bursting everywhere.

No one can say with certainty how many Australians died on that first day.  We know some 4,000 men of the 3^rd Brigade landed as the covering force, and waves of soldiers were to follow as the day wore on. ^[3] 

The estimate is that 650 young men didn’t survive the day.  That some 1,350 were wounded.^[4] 

The reaction of Harry Gissing, a medical attendant, tells us much about the dawn of the reality we now know as Gallipoli.^[5]    He wrote:

Seeing the sufferings of the wounded awoke in me a great rage and as I carried them about on stretchers I swore as I had not done before … I will never forget Sunday 25th of April …

The leadership was divided as to what to do after that – evacuate, given the grim scenes that had played out all day at Anzac Cove as the place of the battle is memorialised today - or as Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary force, acting on the advice of the naval  commanders that to do so was virtually impossible, determined that the course of action in his words was that: 

You have got through the difficult business, now you only have to dig, dig, dig until you are safe.^[6]

And dig, the brave men of our nation and their New Zealand comrades did.  But the safety did not materialise. Three and a half months later Matron Grace Wilson and 80 nurses arrived on the Greek island of Lemnos to help establish the No. 3 Australian General Hospital soon treating over 900 patients in cramped, terrible conditions.  As Matron Wilson wrote in her diary in typically matron like prose – or more likely disbelief that didn’t permit of embellishment:

Things were in rather a state of chaos when the wounded began to arrive. Their dressings which had been applied on the hospital ships were saturated and covered in flies. Dysentery was a scourge on the island ... many of the wounded fell prey to the disease ... the cold weather brought frost-bitten patients.^[7]

Eight months into the campaign, some 60,000 personnel had served at Gallipoli, with an estimated 8,700 lives lost and 18,000 wounded^[8]. The Australians had advanced no further than the positions they had taken on that very first day.^[9]

It is not inaccurate to posit that perhaps the most successful operation of the campaign began in December and was completed just before Christmas 1915 – the full evacuation of troops from Anzac Cove.^[10]  Following the evacuation from Gallipoli, many survivors were sent to the Western Front.

There are so many Gallipoli stories: the experience of Turkish defenders, who suffered at least 85,000 deaths^[11]; the impact on the families whose loved ones never returned or returned as emotionally different men.^[12]

On the 25^th of April 1916 Anzac Day was first commemorated here in Sydney.  4,000 servicemen came out on our streets that day, those who could marched, the wounded, along with their ever faithful, determined and skilled nurses were driven in convoys of cars^[13], 50-60,000 people gathered at the Domain despite the rainy start to the day. A Commemoration Service commenced with one minute’s silence at midday and concluded with the playing of the Last Post and the National Anthem^[14].

That morning the Sydney Morning Herald told the nation what was already understood:

Australia's great heart is throbbing today as it has never throbbed before. For April 25 — "Anzac Day" — is a day that will live in our hearts and in our history as long as Australia lasts.^[15]

As I speak to you now, dawn is breaking on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and our Governor-General is taking part in the Anzac Day Gallipoli Dawn Service^[16]. On behalf of the Nation, she will lay a wreath that includes rosemary taken from the Bravery Garden at Government House in Canberra. Rosemary, sprigs of which we wear today, and which is native to Gallipoli, an ancient symbol of fidelity and remembrance^[17].

Sir William Dean commissioned the garden after the service in which he represented Australia in 1999.

On that occasion he said:

ANZAC is not merely about loss. It is about courage, and endurance, and duty, and love of country, and mateship, and good humour and the survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds^[18].

That is our ANZAC tradition.  110 years later we not only honour it, we understand what it encompassed, for the soldiers, the medical orderlies and nurses, and the families.

We understand the determination and the pride. 

We are thankful for the strength and cohesion that those first ANZACS gave us a nation.

110 years later that day “lives in our hearts”, as we honour all those who have served and continue to serve in our defence forces.

Lest we forget.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/under-a-half-moon-courageous-anzacs-land-at-gallipoli-20060418-gdndov.html

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-24/wwi-soldiers-letter-provides-vivid-account-of-gallipoli-landing/5401882

[3] https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/dawn/plan/landing

[4] https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/dawn/plan/casualty

[5] https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/writing-gallipoli   

[6] https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/ww1/where-australians-served/gallipoli/landing-anzac-cove

[7] https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/nurses/ww1

[8] https://www.dva.gov.au/media/media-backgrounders/gallipoli

[9] https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gallipoli-landing

[10] https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/final-stage-evacuation-anzac-cove-narrative-battalion-war-diaries

[11] https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/dawn/turkish and https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/gallipoli

[12] https://theconversation.com/marked-men-anxiety-alienation-and-the-aftermath-of-war-38593  “emotional, psychological and familial residues of war service – on the people left behind by men who died in service, and on surviving veterans and those who shared their lives”.

[13] https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac-day/traditions

[14] https://nswanzaccentenary.records.nsw.gov.au/in-remembrance/the-first-anzac-day-1916/

[15] https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15641655 Amongst the patriotic prose is also this reflection: Yet we would celebrate it as becomes a people whom war has chastened — a people who realise what war means. War can bring to light great deeds of surpassing heroism. It can show us undying examples of self-sacrifice and love; it can bring out qualities undreamt of in the common folk we meet from day to day; but it can also plunge us into the very depths of sorrow.

[16] https://www.gg.gov.au/about-governor-general/media/governor-general-attend-anzac-day-commemorative-events-gallipoli and https://www.dva.gov.au/recognition/commemorations/commemorative-services/overseas-commemorative-services/anzac-day-gallipoli-turkiye Sydney is 7 hours ahead of Türkiye, so the events are likely to be simultaneous.

[17] https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/commemoration/symbols/rosemary

[18] https://www.shrine.org.au/anzac-day-25-april