Inside ‘filthy hell’ of Anzac trenches

A sensory overload awaits visitors to Sir Peter Jackson’s latest exhibit at the Great War Exhibition in Wellington.

The Quinn’s Post Trench Experience recreates what Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone of the Wellington Battalion called ‘‘a dilapidated, disorganised, filthy hell’’ high on a hillside above Anzac Cove at Gallipoli.

The multimillion-dollar exhibition at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park takes visitors into the darkness of the trenches – shelling, stench and all.

‘‘Pepper’s ghosts’’ – projected images of soldiers – build bombs, dig trenches, help wounded and duck for cover in a physical tour through an uphill warren that represents the underground home of New Zealand soldiers in 1915.

The exhibition, launched on Thursday, coincides with the start of the Returned and Services Association’s annual Poppy Appeal, entitled ‘‘Not all wounds bleed’’, to highlight the posttraumatic stress and mental illhealth suffered by servicemen and women.

Actors Mark Hadlow and Jed Brophy feature as the moving, projected images that create a reality inside the trenches.

In parts, little can be heard except gunfire and shelling.

* Quinn’s Post Trench Experience opens to the public daily from today 9am-6pm. Tickets for the new part of the exhibition cost $20 for adults and $10 for children. Tickets do not include entrance to the Pukeahu National War Memorial