PANEL 2

LANDING – HISTORY

The choice of illustration for this panel presented little problem. There are no photographs of the initial landing of the first wave of Australians on Gallipoli – the 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th Battalions, closely followed by the 12^th – as dawn was breaking on 25 April 1915. In March 1919, Charles Bean, by then Australia’s official war historian, returned to Gallipoli with, among others, the well-known painter, George Lambert. Bean requested Lambert to paint three major works showing the experiences of the Australians in battle – the landing, the charge of the 2^nd Brigade at Krithia on 8 May and the charge of the 3^rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek on 7 August. Lambert completed the first and the last of these and Charles Wheeler took over the Krithia canvas.

Another purpose behind the choice of Lambert’s Anzac, the Landing was to show this tremendous work of art at the spot where the action that it depicts took place. The new Anzac Commemorative Site is situated at the very bottom left of the picture where a small section of beach is visible. This is North Beach and many of the first wave landed there beneath the Sphinx, the dramatic landform in the top centre of the canvas. In the painting, dawn is breaking as the men of the 10^th and 11^th Battalions – South Australians and Western Australians – make their way under Turkish rifle and machine gun fire up the northern slope of Plugge’s Plateau.