The Anzac Walk

1.North Beach – Anzac Commemorative Site

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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.

From that day it was the Sphinx

Charles Bean, Australia's official war correspondent at Gallipoli
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Throughout the eight months that the Australians fought here Bean conscientiously visited every part of the Anzac position and sent official dispatches back to Australia. These were published in the newspapers and in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. In 1919, Bean returned to Gallipoli at the head of a party whose job it was to look into and record aspects of the Australian experience there in 1915. Bean’s account of this journey was published as Gallipoli Mission in 1948. In the early 1920s, Bean also wrote the official Australian account of the campaign in two volumes both entitled The Story of Anzac. [AWM G1561]

Charles Bean, whom you will meet many times on this Anzac Walk through the words he wrote as Australia’s official war correspondent and later as official war historian, has described this spot:

The ridge led down to the sea in only two places – at either end of the semicircle – by the steep slopes of Plugge’s [Plateau] on the right, and by a tortuous spur (afterwards known as Walker’s Ridge) on the left. Between the two, exactly in the middle of the semicircle of cliffs, there had once been a third spur, but the weather had eaten it away. Its bare gravel face stood out, for all the world like that of a Sphinx, sheer above the middle of the valley … To the Australians from that day [25 April 1915] it was the Sphinx.

[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 1, Sydney, 1935, pp 267–8]

So the Anzacs on 25 April 1915, the day of the landing, arriving almost straight from their training camps in Egypt beneath the Pyramids and the Sphinx, claimed Gallipoli by naming its physical features for themselves. Admittedly, they knew little of the local Turkish names. Walker’s Ridge they called after Brigadier General Harold Walker who took over the command of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade on the day of the landing. To the Turks it was Sparrow Hill and the Anzacs built a road, long since disappeared, up its sides to the trenches on the ridge. Plugge’s Plateau (Cruel Hill to the Turks), the high flat-topped hill to your right, was named for Colonel Arthur Plugge, commander of the Auckland Battalion who had his headquarters there.

A view of North Beach, taken late in the campaign, from the slopes leading to Plugge’s Plateau
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Moored at William’s Pier is a self-propelled hospital barge, known on Gallipoli as a ‘beetle’. Beetles, with conspicuous red crosses painted on their sides, carried wounded men out to nearby hospital ships. Just beneath where the cameraman is standing are the tents of the 1st Australian Stationary Hospital, a unit that had moved to Anzac from Lemnos Island in early November 1915 when it was still anticipated that Gallipoli would be held throughout the winter. In the distance are the tents of the 16th British Casualty Clearing Station. [AWM A01867]
'Anzac, the landing 1915', by George Lambert
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1920-22. oil on canvas – 190.5 x 350.5 cm [AWM 2873]

The Sphinx was really an outcrop of the Sari Bair range that runs all the way up from the beach south of Anzac Cove to Koja Temen Tepe (Hill of the Great Pasture), the highest point on this part of Gallipoli. The Sphinx was Yusuk Tepe, High Hill, and the yellow eroded slopes all around it were known as Sari Bair (Yellow Ridge). The Anzacs used the name Sari Bair for the whole range to Koja Temen Tepe. Of all the names given by the Anzacs to the features hereabouts only that of the Sphinx is still used by local people today.

In January 1919, Bean returned to Anzac with the war artist George Lambert. He wanted Lambert to paint a huge canvas showing the landing and, fortunately for them, they had a guide – Lieutenant Hedly Howe – who knew exactly what had happened to him on that historic morning and where the events had taken place. Howe was now working with the Anzac Section of a British Graves Registration unit. But as Private Howe, on 25 April 1915, he had come ashore in a Royal Navy rowing boat along with most of the 11th Battalion from Western Australia on the beach to your right just beneath Plugge’s Plateau. In one boat was a young Royal Navy Midshipman – ‘a red-headed slip of a boy’ – who, as his boat grounded, pulled out his revolver and, clambering over the backs of the astonished Australians, shouted ‘Come on, my lads’! After he was a way up the beach he pulled himself up, realising it was his duty to go back out to the transports with his boat. 

Sister Bessie Pocock, AANS (Australian Army Nursing Service), photographed in 1915 with a camel and its handler at the Sphinx and pyramids near Cairo, Egypt
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The Australian and New Zealand soldiers of the ANZAC Corps were camped beneath the pyramids in the months before they went to Gallipoli and it is easy to see why they gave the name ‘Sphinx’ to the prominent landform above North Beach. [AWM P01840.010]

Howe led Bean and Lambert back to that very spot on North Beach where he had landed. Then they climbed, just as the men of the 11th Battalion had done, up towards Plugge’s Plateau. Bullets had then been landing around them from the heights and Howe remembered seeing two men – Turks – silhouetted against the growing dawn on the plateau. As they came out on to its flat top after about 15 minutes climb, Turkish soldiers were running back off it down into the valley beyond. And so Lambert painted that scene – the West Australians, some wounded and falling back, others pulling their way up the scrub-covered slope of Plugge’s, with the dawn breaking and the coming light touching the yellow earth of the Sphinx.

Lambert's painting, Anzac, the Landing 1915, inspired by the grandeur of the scene here at North Beach and the story of the first minutes of the 11th Battalion's experience at Anzac, hangs today in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. A reproduction of it can be seen in one of the history panels at the Anzac Commemorative Site. These panels are located on the wall opposite you at the top of the pathway. Read the text in these panels before you set out on the rest of the Anzac Walk. They will provide you with a good general account of the whole Gallipoli campaign at Anzac.

A Maltese civilian labourer crouching in his dugout on Anzac during a Turkish bombardment
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To relieve the soldiers from work at the beaches and piers over 400 Egyptian and Maltese civilian labourers were brought to Anzac along with some older recruits of the British Army Service Corps. Bean records that they suffered greatly in the conditions of Gallipoli and that foolishly their camp was placed in a position on North Beach where it was open to enemy sniping and shelling. [AWM H00255]

After the so-called Battle of the Landing that lasted until 3 May 1915, North Beach became a relatively quiet spot. Men came down here to swim from the frontline trenches on the ridge above at Russell’s Top and the Nek. Those positions, and others further north at the so-called ‘outposts’, were held for most of the campaign by New Zealand units and Australian Light Horsemen. The outposts marked the northern limits of the ‘old Anzac’ area and they were reached from the northern end of Anzac Cove through a long, deep trench, that cut right across the back of North Beach, known as the ‘Big Sap’. Such a trench was necessary as Turkish snipers could fire on much of the North Beach area. After the ‘August Offensive’ of 6–10 August 1915, a large area of the range to the north of North Beach fell to the British Empire forces. North Beach then became a major base area with mountains of stores, a post office and a tent hospital. Two piers, Williams’ and Walkers’, were built to handle the unloading of barges and other small craft. Williams’ Pier ran offshore virtually opposite where the commemorative wall now stands and it was from here, on the morning of 20 December 1915, that the last Australian soldiers left Anzac at the final evacuation. From first to last the Sphinx had witnessed it all.

Mass after mass of foam 
North Beach, November 1915
Looking inland from off shore at William's Pier, North Beach, taken just days before the final evacuation of Anzac on the night of 19-20 December 1915
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This was the scene in late 1915; today it is the location the Anzac Commemorative Site. The area is dominated by the landform of the Sphinx and notice the terracing running along the lower slopes of the range. This terracing was constructed by the Anzacs for dugouts and other dwellings. Juts beyond the pier were large piles of stores laid up against the coming winter. [AWM C01621]

[Today, 17 November 1915 ] there was a fairly strong wind rising in the hills. You could see the breakers rolling in, white, three deep, all along the beach … The seas were breaking over the whole length of the Milo, our breakwater ship, flinging themselves against the stern, and then plowing their foam over the whole length of the pier. Williams’ pier (on North Beach) was fairly right. But the little Walker’s Ridge Pier north of it was gone, all except the piles. The water was over the beach right up to the Naval Transport Officer’s door.

I went along the beach where natives and big fatigue parties of Australians and the old Navy’s Corps … were lined up and helping to haul occasional relics out of the water … Dead mules were being washed up. Further north, near Fisherman’s Hut, several bodies buried shallow in the sand had been half uncovered. Around in Anzac Cove the beach was simply a litter of the trestle of old piers, old barges half broken up sawing and bumping about like elephants dancing some slow side step on the water’s edge. The beach was littered with the big debris of the piers over which the waves were bursting in mass after mass of foam. One man was nearly carried out by the waves – fatigue parties here, too, were carting the stores to higher levels but lots of ammunition boxes were still half in the water; and the shell cases (now worth 10/- each) about 10000 of them, were in imminent danger of being buried altogether. Further on the AMC [Army Medical Corps] dug-outs had been protected against the sea by piles of boxes, but every seventh wave washed in and threatened to carry them out to sea altogether.

[Kevin Fewster, Frontline Gallipoli: C E W Bean, diaries from the trenches, Sydney, 1990, pp 179-181]

A Post Office, eh
North Beach, November 1915
Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, No 2 Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, having a haircut at Anzac
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Lawrence landed at Anzac Cove on 2 June 1915 and during his time on Gallipoli kept a diary in which he recorded the experiences of an engineer during the campaign. Much of their work involved the digging and construction of trenches, tunnels and other necessary works such as piers. On 27 November 1915, Lawrence recorded watching a Turkish soldier get out of his trench, walk down a hillside and out into the sea until he drowned. Both sides were firing at this soldier but this gunfire did not hit him. [AWM P02226.020]

What are those white things on the hillside under Walker’s Ridge? Not tents surely; but yes they are. Tents on Anzac; golly, things must be good. We are not headed for Anzac Cove but round the point on North beach. Are we going to land here? Why, when we went away it was quite unsafe to wander round the point; evidently Suvla has improved matters for, now where it was unsafe to tread, I see tents, dugouts and a pier. We are making for the latter. Ah, he’s missed the pier. There is a banging of changing clutches – a rattle of rudder chains – and out we go again. The same conglomeration of noises and in we come. This time he runs fair and square alongside. It does not take long to get our gear off and on to a little truck.

Once more on old Anzac. What a change! Why, when we left there was hardly anything round this side of the Cove. It was not safe. Now there are tents and a Y.M.C.A. and what is this great sandbag mansion going up directly in front of us? A Post Office, eh. Eighty feet long, twelve feet high and twenty-four feet wide. Some building! Windows, doors and a counter, too. Crikey, they are coming on in these parts.

[The Gallipoli Diary of Sergeant Lawrence, Sir Ronald East (ed), Melbourne, 1983, pp.110-111]

Faithful souls of the working parties
Making the Beach Road
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Bauchop, commanding officer of the Otago Rifles, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, outside his dugout near No 2 Outpost
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This post lay on the northern extremity of the Anzac position along North Beach and its garrison prevented any attempt by the Turks to infiltrate around the left flank of Anzac. Bauchop’s dugout is being held up by oars from rowing boats which brought the 7th Battalion AIF ashore opposite Fisherman’s Hut on the morning of 25 April 1915. Turkish machine guns caused severe casualties in these boats and 28 men of the  7th Battalion lie buried in No 2 Outpost Cemetery. The cemetery is just off the road going north from the Anzac Commemorative Site and, if you visit it, look for the inscription 25 April 1915 and 7th Battalion among the headstones. Fisherman’s Hut is still there and visible from the road on the way to the cemetery. [AWM A02031]

Night after night the troops who were “resting” crept with their picks and shovels along the beach, to make the necessary road. This after-dark activity is most trying – each man working as silently as possible with his rifle at his elbow. Any noise is a magnet certain to attract machine-gun fire. Even in daylight it takes careful management to collect working parties and the necessary transport at the right spot, but in the darkness and in a region where enemy scouts and snipers roamed as soon as daylight failed, the difficulties were increases a hundredfold.

Sand makes a poor road. To get a reasonable result it was necessary to collect the big stones of the seashore and carry them to the shore edge of the beach and place them as a foundation; on top of this, clay was deposited – carted from the hillside near by in the mule carts of the Indian transport service; the whole was top-dressed by the sand of the beach, and finally, the hard-worked soldiers carried petrol tins of water from the sea and poured it over the surface to make the material set. So, harassed by the splutter of machine guns night after night, the faithful souls of the working parties steadily carried the road from Anzac Cove along the North Beach towards Sulva Flats.

[Fred Waite, The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Auckland, 1921, pp.192-193]

No kick! No kick! –
Working on the Big Sap
The view from No 2 Outpost, Anzac, looking back along North Beach to Plugge’s Plateau and Ari Burnu Point
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Anzac Cove lies around the point. The image appeared in Pictures of the Battlefields of Anzac by Melbourne journalist, Philip Schuler published in 1916. [Schuler was the Gallipoli correspondent for The Age.] Running along the middle foreground is the so-called ‘Long Sap’ [trench]. This was dug to allow men to pass from the outposts back to Anzac Cove safe from the bullets of Turkish snipers on the ridges. The sap was later widened considerably to permit supplies of war material carried by mules to pass each other in either direction in the build-up towards the ‘August Offensive’. [AWM A02027]

To get troops quickly and secretly from Anzac to the outposts and to the foot of the deres [valleys] up which the assaulting columns must approach the Turk, it was necessary to widen the communication trench known as the ‘Big Sap’. This trench had been evolved as the outposts were established, and at many places could be enfiladed by the enemy on the heights; and nowhere was it wide enough to take troops two abreast. The pack mules use it by day, and though the soldier cared little for Turkish shells, he lived in fear of the donkey’s steel-shod hoofs; it was no uncommon sight to see the soldier, disbelieving the warning ‘No kick! No kick!’ of the Indian muleteer, climb out of trench and risk a bullet rather than encounter a transport mule.

Partly the way was through the sandhills – here the necessary width of 5 feet was easy to attain; but in the harder clay, the pioneer working parties had been content to make a narrow slit, leaving the hardest work still to do. All through July the men of No. 4 Defence Section toiled at their Herculean task – the Australian Infantry of the 4th Brigade, the N.Z. Mounted Rifles and the Australian Light Horse from Walker’s Ridge, and the best workers of all, the Maori contingent from No. 1 Post.

An Indian soldier of the Indian Mule Cart Transport Company rounding the point at the southern end of North Beach leading to Anzac Cove
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This photograph was taken late in the campaign, possibly in November 1915. In the middle distance, roughly where the Anzac Commemorative Site is today, can be seen William’s Pier and beyond it Walker’s Jetty. To the left of the piers, out in the bay, is the small steamer, the Milo. In late October 1915, the Milo was deliberately run aground here to provide a sheltering breakwater for William’s Pier. Water barges would tie up alongside the ship and pump their cargo ashore to holding tanks. For the evacuation William’s Pier was extended out to the Milo. [AWM C01635]

Man is naturally a lazy animal. When men work hard, there is always some incentive. The Maori soldier, picked man that he was, wished to justify before the world that his claim to be a front-line soldier was not an idle one. Many a proud rangitira served his country in the ranks, an example to some of his Pakeha brothers. Their discipline was superb and when their turn came for working party, the long-handled shovels swung without ceasing until, just before the dawn, the signal came to pack up and get home.

Where the trench was liable to enfilade fire, its direction was altered, and here and there overhead protection was built with some precious timber and sandbags. At every few hundred yards a recess was cut to enable troops to stand aside while mule trains or passing troops moved up or down. Leaving nothing to chance, infantry parties, two abreast, marched through the trench from end to end to ensure that nowhere would there be a check.

[Fred Waite, The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Auckland, 1921, pp.192-193]