We got up at 7 a.m. and packed up our tent for the last time. We hung around the camp for half an hour or so waiting for a dolmüs to take us back over to Eceabat. When it arrived we paid the camp bill which came to a hefty 66,000TL then said goodbye to the shining blue Aegean and the ANZAC beaches and headed back over to the Eastern side of the peninsula.
When we got to Eceabat we decided to treat ourselves a bit and checked into a hotel on the waterfront, right above “Bob Hawke’s Bistro/Burger Bar.”1 After we had settled into our 20,000TL a night hovel, we went and and imbibed a B.H.B.B.B breakfast of eggs, sausages, tomatoes and English tea…YUM!
After we have finished eating we settled down to read some back copies of TNT2 and I read some information sheets about the Gallipoli campaign. The Casualties of the nine-month campaign where as follows:
489,000 troops fought in on the Gallipoli Peninsula
- 410,000 British Empire soldiers
- 79,000 French soldiers
252,000 casualties (killed, wounded or evacuated sick)
- 205,000 British Empire
- 47,000 French
43,000 B.E soldiers killed
- 7,595 Australian
- 2,431 New Zealand
- 8,000 French
30,000 have no known grave.
On the hill above the European Side Of The Dardanelles is a huge inscription comprising four lines from a poem by Turkish poet Halil Onan:
STOP O PASSER BY
THIS EARTH YOU THUS TREAD UNAWARES
IS WHERE AN AGE SANK
BOW AND LISTEN THIS QUIET MOUND
IS WHERE THE HEART OF A NATION THROBS
We spent the afternoon sunbathing on the rocks beside The Narrows then went back to “Bobs…” where we sat and drank cold drinks, read old time magazines and listened to [the Australian rock band] Cold Chisel on the stereo. In the evening we had beans and rice at a lokanta then spent our last 4,000TL on beers at “Bobs…”
1Bob Hawke was the Prime Minister of Australia at that time.
2TNT was a magazine published in London for expat Australians and New Zealanders.
CurseOfTheTraveller 