General News
25 April, 2023
THROUGH TEENAGE EYES
As the Anzac Day baton is handed down through the generations, we reproduce here a poem written in 1988, rediscovered among documents retrieved when Murtoa RSL closed its doors. The author was 13-year-old Trisha Puls, of Form 8B, Murtoa High School...
As the Anzac Day baton is handed down through the generations, we reproduce here a poem written in 1988, rediscovered among documents retrieved when Murtoa RSL closed its doors.
The author was 13-year-old Trisha Puls, of Form 8B, Murtoa High School.
The poem is Trisha's interpretation of a soldier's experience on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.
Anzac Cove, when visited by a journalist 46 years later, on the morning of Anzac Day 1961, was deserted. At that time, making a pilgrimage to Turkey to spend April 25 on the Peninsula had not been thought of by Australians.
"No living thing was visible, the solitude and loneliness so penetrating that it had an almost physical impact," the journalist wrote.
"This was Australia’s national day dedicated to the memory of that immortal morning when the name of "Anzac" had been born and Australia claimed her place among the nations of the world.
"Strange that I should be there alone, that no one else had thought to come to Gallipoli on this day of days to pay tribute to the dead."
She noted that the graves were carefully tended, with shrubs and flowers grown with water carted up into the hills.
In 1961, the remains of trenches could still be seen clearly at Steele and Courtney's Post.
"No hall of memory was ever so impressive or so moving as those lonely hills and graveyards," the visitor wrote.
"To walk among them on any day, and on Anzac Day especially, is a profound and unforgettable experience.
"At Gallipoli 34,000 British and Empire troops died and only 7000 have known graves. Those who return to Gallipoli are struck by its loneliness and shattering silence."