Looking down the side of Chunuk Bair, into the pine trees. The steep ridge on the left is Rhododendron Ridge, with Ari Burnu, where the boats first landed, away in the distance. Down to the right, out of sight, is The Farm Cemetery. This is a small piece of flat land that the Wellingtonians rested on, before continuing the climb to the top.

 

Looking from The Farm Cemetery, back up to the top of Chunuk Bair. You can see the top of the New Zealand Memorial poking up above the hill line. The Wellington men scrambled up the slope on the right, to the top of Rhododendron Ridge, and attacked the Turks with a rush going from right to left across the top of the picture.

 

Here we can look back down Rhododendron Ridge from The Farm Cemetery, down towards Ocean Beach. You can see houses away in the distance. The hill poking up straight in front was called Table Top, and the Wellingtonians came up and over that hill. I walked along a small car track to the end of Rhododendron Ridge with my friend Mike, and began the long climb back up to the top of Chunuk Bair.

 

Rhododendron Ridge leads up to Chunuk Bair, which can just be seen at the top of the hill. The Wellington Battalion came up this ridge as they finally captured Chunuk Bair on 8 August. Down the hill on the side you can see a flat area called The Farm. This was captured on 7 August as the New Zealanders came up the hill.

 

The track up Rhododendron Ridge is steep and rough. Gallipoli gets a lot of rain, and you can see how the soil has been washed away in places.

 

Down near the bottom of Rhododendron Ridge is a little piece of flat land that was called Table Top. They had to climb this hill first to get on to Rhododendron Ridge. Others went up the gullies each side, called Chailak Dere and Sazli Dere. In the distance, on the left, you can again see Ari Burnu. The Wellington men had walked along the edge of the beach, through a huge trench, called the Great Sap, to the bottom of the hills below, and began their great climb into history.

 

Many thousands of men died on the hills at Gallipoli. I found pieces of human bones while climbing up Rhododendron Ridge. Here are some under a thorny bush. My hat is there to show the size of the bones. Heavy rain over many years would have washed any covering soil off the bones.

 

Further up the track, yet more bone pieces. The heavy rains would have been constantly uncovering bone pieces like this.

 

This part of the ridge was called The Apex.

Both sides were constantly trying to dig tunnels underneath each other, put explosives in the tunnel, and then blow up the other side. I found a tunnel where the roof had collapsed in. This picture shows me standing in the tunnel. People had put stones around the hole to warn of the danger.

 

I climbed down into the tunnel and took a photo. There is my hat in the picture to show the size of the tunnel. It went ahead and then around a corner. It was too dangerous to go any further because of the danger of the roof falling in on me.

A little further on we came upon a tunnel which went straight down. I suppose this would have had other tunnels running off it. It was very deep. I thought probably about 8 to 10 metres down in to the darkness which we could see. I threw a stone down and it kept going into the dark. I didn't want to fall in there!

(Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl 1663, F 168814)

From the beach, the way to the top of Chunuk Bair was up Rhododendron Ridge. The New Zealand soldiers came up this hill as they tried to capture Chunuk Bair in the August attacks. Near the top is a point called The Apex. This was what it looked like after the August attacks with the New Zealand soldiers dug in as they fought back against Turkish counter attacks. It might have been some of these men who dug the tunnels in photos above.