Aphrodisias

Turkey beyond Istanbul has so far exceeded the Bazflyer's expectations. We traveled to Izmir on Turkish Airlines and this was a very professional and friendly experience. The terminal at Izmir airport is brand new. It has been constructed to a grand scale something which was emphasised when the passengers off our flight were its sole occupants.    

We were somehow quite unprepared for the apparent abundant fertility of the land. Wide flat valley systems carpeted with olives, fruit, cotton, vegetables and more. However, as our historian guide pointed out this is precisely why early civilisations lived and prospered in this part of the world. The land was fertile, water was plentiful and building resources were readily to hand. 

The ruins of Ephesus, which are still being excavated, tell of a magnificent and opulent city with a population of 250,000 inhabitants. But it is the story of the discovery of the ancient Roman city of Aphrodisias that captured the Bazflyers interest. In 1958 Turkish photographer Ara Güler was visiting a rural area and while returning to Izmir in the middle of the night he lost his way and decided to spend the night at the first village he came to. This turned out to be the small village of Geyre. When he saw the statues embedded in the coffeehouse walls and the carved marble tables, he was quite taken aback and asked where they'd come from.

The next morning Ara wandered awestruck through the village that had been build literally on the ancient city of Aphrodisias. He took photographs and, after first showing them to a few archaeologists, sent them to Kenan Erim, a Turkish archaeologist working at Princeton University at the time. Upon seeing them, Erim jumped on the first plane to Istanbul and proceeded immediately to Geyre. And so it all began...

    The stadium at Ephesus could seat 25,000

   Much grander than it appears today, this sports arena at Aphrodisias could accomodate 50,000

   The library at Ephesus 

Streets of Istanbul

Istiklal Street is one of the most famous avenues in Istanbul and allegedly visited by nearly 3 million people in a single day over the course of weekends. On Sunday afternoon the Bazflyers joined the throng and walked the narrow avenue from end to end and back again.

This is definitely not the place for a demophobic. Never have we been to a more crowded street, completely packed with people and on Sunday afternoon it felt like the beating heart of Istanbul.

Flanked on either side by designer stores, kebab cafes, ice cream parlours, souvenir shops, bars, restaurants and more. Out on the street there were vendors peddling their wares and buskers of every description. Down the middle of all this runs a quaint tram.

The street is known to be the political nerve of Istanbul, the place for demonstrations and political rallies. It did not disappoint. While walking the street we passed by a noisy political event staring obviously opposing factions and being watched over by a police riot squad detail complete with water cannon. We were later told the demonstrators disbursed after police sent a tear gas canister among them.

Here is a random selection of images we captured......

Chunuk Bair

Chunuk Bair is the highest hill at Gallipoli and in the latter stages of the campaign it became the site of an intense battle between New Zealand and Turkish forces. Today the hill top is a memorial site shared by both the New Zealand and Turkish governments. It is where New Zealand holds its own Gallipoli commendation service.

After the dawn service at Anzac Cove. the Bazflyers walked the roughly 13 km up hill to attend the New Zealand centenary service at Chunuk Bair. The memorial service paid tribute to both NZ and Turkish Forces. It had a sensitive Maori component and was beautiful and moving. 

Dignitaries in the row include Prince Charles & Prince Harry flanked by John Key (New Zealand PM) and Tony Abbot (Australian PM) 

Anzac Cove the Vigil

Over 10,000 pilgrims are making their way onto the Anzac Cove memorial site for the centenary dawn commeration. As the Bazflyers inched forward in a slow moving line towards the final security check we turned around to see our NZ Prime MinisterJohn Key right behind us pressing-the-flesh amoung the many Australians and Kiwis waiting their turn to go through security. Wow....!

    

     Sunset on the Agean Sea as we trekked along the sea shore towards Anzac Cove

    Now to sit the night out on the lawn.

Cape Helles

The southern most tip of the Dardanelle Peninsula is named Cape Helles. On the morning of the 25th April 1915 British and French forces made five beach landings at Cape Helles as part of the amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.

In contrast to the landings at Anzac Cove, the British landings at Cape Helles did not go at all well and the dawn landing at 'V' beach was no exception. As the Bazflyers stood on high ground overlooking the beach the defensive opportunities afforded by the surrounding topography were clearly evident. 

Ottoman forces had anticipated a landing. They were well prepared and could not be seen from the beach. Capitulation by British forces meant the landing did not take place until well after dawn. As the British forces prepared to land they saw no evidence of the opposing forces but when the solders approached the beach in open boats rifle fire from the surrounding high ground turned the scene into a blood bath.

    V beach - looking down from the high ground

On that morning off 'V' beach was Lieutenant Colonel Doughty Wylie who at 46 years of age was in command of a group of Royal Fusiliers. Wylie was a seasoned military man. During the Turk Revolution of 1909 he was resident in Mersina as British Consul where he greatly assisted the Ottoman Forces in several encounters and was decorated by the Ottoman Government.

Wylie's involvement in the Helles landing was due to his great knowledge of all things Turkish and fluency in the language. On day two of the landing, with the brigadier general and brigade major both killed, Wylie lead a group of men in an attempt to capture a heavily defended hill. In respect for the Turks he lead the successful advance unarmed carrying only his ceremonial cane. Unfortunately, Wylie was killed in the action. He was posthumously awarded the VC and due to his respect by the Turks, his grave is the only solitary grave on Gallipoli, very near the spot he fell.

There were two woman in Doughty Wylie's life. One of them visited his grave during the campaign becoming the only woman to set foot on Gallipoli during the war. These women and their lives is another fascinating story.....

    Landing at Cape Helles claimed over 6500 allied soldiers killed or wounded

 

Tending to the Wounded

The image usually associated with 25 April, 1915 is that of Anzac soldiers charging bravely up the steep and barren slopes above Anzac Cove. Less appreciated is the picture of nurses on that same day attending to hundreds of battered and bleeding men on the decks and in the confined wards of hospital ships anchored off the beach.

Wounded men were constantly being ferried in small craft out to hospital ships and among the nurses, doctors and orderlies was a young Australian nurse, Sister Ella Tucker working on the hospital ship 'Gascon', who wrote:

"The wounded from the landing commenced coming on board at 9am and poured into the ship's wards from barges and boats. The majority still had on their field dressings and a number of these were soaked through. Two orderlies cut off the patient's clothes and I started immediately with dressings. There were 76 patients in my ward and I did not finish until 2am".

By the evening of the 25th, 557 wounded had been taken on board the Gascon.

 

   Hospital ships were anchored offshore and the wounded transferred from the beach in small craft

    Steve Chambers, our military historian, dispensing his huge resovoir of Anzac knowledge

    Graves of the many who did not make it to a hospital ship

     

Anzac Cove

Anzac Cove is the name of an inconspicuous street located on Taupo Airport where the Bazflyers are based...but there is a whole lot more to the street name.

One hundred years ago....men from Australia and New Zealand (ANZAC forces) were on ships heading north across the Aegean Sea for an amphibious landing on the Dardanelles Peninsula. We can only contemplate what might have occupied their thoughts at this time but there is one thing we can be sure of, none of the men had the slightest idea of the 'hell' that lay ahead.

Today the Bazflyers travelled from the town of Cannaklkele by ferry across the Dardanelles strait and then to a beach on the western side of the peninsula known as Anzac Cove. It was here the ANZAC's alighted on Turkish soil just before dawn on the 25th April 1915. Many stories surround this landing and one of these is that the landing at Anzac Cove, with its steep hinterland of rough gullies, was never intended. Todays historians have proved otherwise. The landings went largely as planned and with hardly any opposition.

However, almost immediately the ANZACs began their push inland they found themselves under increasing pressure from the Turkish defenders. We will never know the exact number, but at the end of the first day it is estimated some 900 ANZACs lay dead and over 2000 were wounded. Losses on the Turkish were similar. Sadly, this was only the beginning.....

    Memorial at Anzac Cove

    The beach on which the soldiers alighted

   Lest we forget

Constantinople

Istanbul bridges Asia and Europe both physically and culturally and with a population approaching 20 million people, it is also one of the largest cities in Europe and the world. Originally known as  Constantinople the history of this legionary mega-city goes back over 1700 years. These days the city's rich past attracts tourists from all over the world and today the Bazflyers were also tourists.

Last evening we joined our Gallipoli tour group at Istanbul. The tour, organised especially for the occasion by Australian company Matt McLachlan Battlefield Tours, has over 800 participants and is only one of many speciality tours focused on the Gallipoli centenary. Talk about organisation on a major scale! Dispite todays weather being cold and damp and Ozzie brothers everywhere, the Bazflyers boarded coach A103 this morning for a very informative day looking at Constantinople's grand and glorious past.

    Night view from our hotel room

   Our group and guide with a green flag

   Tulips originated from Constantinople 

   Buildings on a grand scale

   The basilica cisten provided water for the old city

   Ceilings....

  ......and walls adorned.

Streets of Cairo

The streets of Cairo are an amazing kaleidoscope of action images overlaid with complimenting audio effects and aromas. The colliding assault of all this on one's senses is quite overwhelming and unlike anything the Bazflyers have previously experienced. Every turn of the way unearths another new world. The markets are very old with streets just wide enough to accomodate a passing camel. Trade here is largely unchanged over the centuries leaving one with the feeling an ANZAC from the Great War could return and still navigate his way about using familiar landmarks.

   El Fishawy cafe is open 24/7 and has never closed in over 100 years

    Young Egyptian woman in a cafe

    Compitition for 7-Eleven

    Taxi driver

   Girls out shopping

    Roadside motor garage

    Spice markets

   Marketing in action

   Shop window

Big tick for Eddie

Today our post is a giant tick for Eddie Gould and G.A.S.E. What a wizard..! What a great little operation...! In between guiding the Bazflyers around Cairo on an amazing ANZAC related program he had put together, Eddie has simultaneously been facilitating a C172 flight through Africa and Russian R66 helicopters to the North Pole. All in a day's work we are told...!

Visit GASE on Facebook for Eddie's post on yesterday's ANZAC discovery....

https://www.facebook.com/AviationEgypt

In ANZAC footsteps

The convoy to Europe with the Australian Division and New Zealand Force formed the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps - the ANZAC's. On their way to Europe via the Suez Canal the ANZAC's were disembarked In Egypt where they encamped near the pyramids at Cairo ready for action against Turkey which had joined Germany in the war.Today the Bazflyers, with Eddie in command, traveled west from Cairo in Abdullah's taxi - to visit the locality where the ANZAC's encamped.

The road journey, although not that far as distance goes, was another world experience in itself. Start by imagining a seething mass of vehicles self organised into five lanes travelling at speed along a highway designed for four lanes. This means you could literally extend a finger out of the car window and touch the other vehicle on either side - or at least that was an overwhelming impression one got from the back seat. Then add the audio effect of endless tooting of horns. Perhaps all this helps explain why every car carries evidence of multiple contacts with other vehicles. However, despite all the on road mayhem we did not see an accident all day.

The visual impact of laying eyes on the pyramids for the first time would be a challenge for the well travelled Bazflyers to describe. We can only imagine how the scene might have appeared to the ANZAC soldier.

    Abdullah's Taxi

    The great Pyramids

    Bazflyers and Eddie with a camel

    Bazflyer "Camel Riders" near where ANZAC's were in 1915

   The Sphinx 

Heliopolis

The first NZ nurses deployed in WW1 left Wellington on the 1st April 1915. They initially served in Cairo with the Australian Army Nursing Corps until the first members of the NZ Army Nursing Service arrived. From the outset nurses of the NZANS were accorded officer status and this lead to many instances of disbelief in the military that woman were to be treated as officers. 

Eddie, our wonderful host had already researched relevant locations and with the skill of a practiced local he shepharded the Bazflyers around the chaotic streets of Heliopolis. A century ago Heliopolis was a newly constructed 'grand-scale' town outside of Cairo. It was here NZ nurses worked tending to the many injured New Zealand soldiers evacuated from Gallipoli and elsewhere. The ANZAC's operated two hospitals in Heliopolis, Australia had set up a hospital in the Palace Hotel which became known as the Palace Hospital. New Zealand used money donated from Wanganui residents to equip a nearby house that became known as the 'Aotea' Convalescence Hospital.

The tremendous difficulties which beset these nurses in Egypt during the summer of 1915 can not be underestimated. New Zealanders, who by their enthusiasm and devotion to duty established and built up an organisation that proved to be then and again in WW2, of inestimable benefit to our sick and wounded soldiers.

    Today the former Palace Hospital is the white Presidental Palace behind the Bazflyers

    An old Heliopolis building

    New tyres anyone?

Heliopolis street scene