Last year I visited Turkey with a group of writers and photographers. Well, our leaders were a real writer and a real photographer, the rest of us were keen students. We all fell in love with the country and the people.

Some of you have already seen the pieces I’ve included below here today, but I hope you might enjoy them again, or just be patient while my new followers read them.

I think the thing that impressed me most was the sense of history:standing on the stage of the amphitheatre in Ephesus, knowing that St John preached some of the lessons we read in the bible, from this spot; treading the boardwalks of the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, to see the underground water supply built by the Romans; stepping inside one of the many caravanserais, each one separated by the distance a camel could travel in a day. Then, of course there are the famous buildings – Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Chora Church and the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, all of which filled me with wonder.

Australians want to visit Gallipoli. Having heard so much about it, and being told that I would be very moved by it, I felt sure that, although it was on the route and I couldn’t avoid it, I would probably find it historically interesting, but nothing more. I’ll finish today with the poem that I had to write on a scrap of paper while the bus drove away from what was truly a heart-wrenching experience; and that was only the first stop in a very emotional day.

GALLIPOLI

Young and brave and full of hope
they landed on an open beach.
Our Anzacs.
Beneath the sphinx-like rock
where Turkish soldiers greeted them,
invaders of their ancient land,
with military skills honed by history.

For eight long months
they fought and fell
and tried to hide in trenches
condemned to flies, disease and filth
their tortured bodies, minds and hearts
longing for home.
But hope seemed lost:
the only escape; injury or death.

Eight hundred thousand men and more,
soldiers from both sides
lie buried, here at Gallipoli,
in earth bloodied by their loss.

All were loved,
all remembered
for doing what they thought was right
but what a terrible waste.
Victoria Mizen 2013