Revealed: Anzac Cove trail of destruction
Anzac Cove will hardly look like it did in 1915 when an estimated 20,000 people, including Prime Minister John Howard, visit for the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings later this month.
Australian Government-requested roadworks have radically reshaped the landscape in the past three months. It now has only a passing resemblance to the one Australian troops encountered in 1915.
The work has left the sacred site - where many believe the Australian character was forged - scarred and radically altered.
A Sunday Age investigation has revealed that:
· Gone are the slopes of the Ari Burnu knoll at the northern end of the cove that Australian troops rushed up and fought a small force of Turks with bayonets.
· Gone also is a large part of MacLagan's Ridge where Colonel Sinclair MacLagan led a force of covering troops to establish the first foothold for the invading force.
· Where once a single-lane road ran along the foreshore, visitors will find a three-lane road carved from the historic landscape, leaving a large, raw escarpment. Such a wide road was not requested but it was built this way to reduce erosion.
· At either end of the cove - at North Beach where the dawn service will be held and at Hell Spit near the memorial to Simpson and his donkey - parking spaces for buses have been built. Underneath are little gullies, the tracks troops once walked and the shallow remains of foxholes they crouched in.
· A large piece of Anzac Gully, from the road up to MacLagan's Ridge and Plugges Plateau, has been carved out during the roadworks. General William Birdwood had his headquarters in the gully and many key decisions of the war were made here.
Of the 12,000 Australians who landed on the first day in 1915, about 2000 were killed in the first 24 hours. From then until December 20, about 40,000 Australian and New Zealand troops clung desperately to about 162 hectares.
More than 8000 died in 240 days and because of the brutal nature of the conflict, most were never buried in war graves. Some of their bones remain on the hillside in shallow graves, and many were probably disturbed by mechanical diggers and trucks doing the road works.
The Sunday Age investigation included a visit to Anzac Cove, the examination of historic photos taken during the Gallipoli campaign and afterwards, and an examination of C. E. W. Bean's Official History.
It also revealed that:
· The Australian Government last August requested the foreshore road works to provide better access for the record crowds expected at this month's service.
· Australian officials, including Air Vice-Marshal Gary Beck, who heads the Office of Australian War Graves, regularly monitored the construction work, although it is believed they say they had no control over what was done.
· In the three days that the slopes of Ari Burnu were removed earlier this month, there were no archaeologists present, as the Federal Government claimed.
· The Turkish Government has ignored the Australian ambassador to Turkey's request to remove landfill from the road widening that has been dumped over a small cliff onto the beach.
· Australia has abandoned plans to list Anzac Cove on the National Heritage List (see story page 2) and there has been no recent audit of the Gallipoli sites. A preliminary study that recommended further auditing of preservation measures was handed to government officials in 2003 but has been kept under wraps.
Last week the Prime Minister's office did not respond to The Sunday Age's inquiries.
A spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister De-Anne Kelly said Mrs Kelly and Air Vice-Marshal Beck were too busy to be interviewed.
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said yesterday the events were a "historical tragedy".
He said the Government had shown "appalling neglect" of the Anzac Cove site.
Mr Beazley, who will also attend the Anzac Day dawn service at Gallipoli, said visitors should be told the excavations had changed the landscape.
"We need to comprehend how the battleground has changed as a result of the work," he said.
"Somewhere in the interpretation centres or in some sort of descriptive plaque, it needs to be made clear how different this now is from what was originally seen by our forefathers, to make sure people who visit the site understand that things were different then."
Mr Beazley said the Government should have made it "an issue of urgent priority" when the first concerns were raised about the roadworks earlier this year.
He said that when the matter was first raised in Parliament, the Government should have spoken to Turkey to "make absolutely certain" the historical values of the site were not damaged.
"If this has occurred in the way in which the (Sunday Age) story describes, it is an historical tragedy," Mr Beazley said.
"The thousands of Australians who visit the site need to be able to thoroughly imagine what it is that their forefathers did.
"The Turks here are not in any way, shape or form, to blame.
"This was, after all, a product of an Australian initiative. If, after all the issues have been raised in Parliament, this Government has failed to act, then it is appalling neglect."
Mr Beazley said the problem was that the damage could not be repaired.
"Time has long since passed when John Howard and his ministers needed to give this matter their personal attention to effectively audit any historical detriment the site has experienced," he said.
"The problem is, once it's done, it can't be undone."
The Sunday Age has been told that senior Australian officials who visited Anzac Cove recently were surprised by the intrusive nature of the roadworks by the Turkish contractors along the foreshore.
Turkish officials are believed to have told the officials the excavation work at the Ari Burnu knoll was necessary to minimise soil erosion.
To stop erosion, contractors carved "burns" into the side of the cove, almost the width of another road.
Turkish authorities are believed to have also told the officials that the alternative was to build a sea wall along the beach that would have destroyed it.