Memories of where the Anzac legend began
When in 2011 I went to Albany in Western Australia and visited the military museum there in the Princess Royal Fortress, there was an old soldier in a wheelchair manning the entrance.
‘‘Oh, we had a Kiwi here last week,’’ he told me. ‘‘He looked at the list of troop ships that departed here for Egypt in 1914 and thought he recognised one name. He rang his grandma back home, and she said yes, your grandpa left from here.’’
At the lookout over the sparkling blue sea, I studied the chart there. Outlined on it were the headlands and harbour I could see straight ahead, but whereas that morning there was only a single white yacht making the most of the perfect conditions, on the diagram were drawn three dozen ships in five neat lines. Two convoys took the first contingents of New Zealand and Australian soldiers to fight in World War I: the beginning of the Anzac legend.
On that sunny morning, I was
sad to think of all those soldiers who had sailed away from there, too many of them forever. Only one in 10 returned, none of them the same eager young man who had left home so willingly. I took a photo of the chart.
Today I looked at it again, and this time I, too, recognised a name. The Tahiti was the converted steamship that, I recently learned, took Arthur Peat, my aunt’s uncle, from Otago to Suez and then to Gallipoli, where he died in 1915, two days before his 20th birthday. I saw his name on the memorial there at Chunuk Bair in 2015, and stuck a poppy beside it. I was sad then, too.
There’s an impressive new National Anzac Memorial at Albany now. Read Barbara Smith’s story about it on page 12.