By: Phoenix Arrien
In Australian post offices there is sand for sale.
Now this is strange you may think. However it is not just any old sand. Not the sand from the legendary Bells Beach on the South Coast or a sugar white beach from Queensland. It is not even from some island floating in a pea soup of blue and green on the Great Barrier Reef.
No it is sand from a beach in Turkey. White Australia (as different from Black of Indigenous Australians) has only a couple of hundred years of history on this great continent and we tend to grope around for meaningful legends that help us identify our national characteristics.
ANZAC means Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and it was the boys in the corps who landed on a Turkish Beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April 1915. While Australians had fought in the Boer War in Africa, this was the first time the nation had really made its mark on the world stage.
Eight fruitless months of fighting, dying and rotting in trenches, finally saw a retreat, but not before the ANZACs got a reputation for courage, endurance and loyalty under fire. Through ingenuity and lateral thinking, the retreat was carried out without one loss of life. These attributes Australian’s view as the ANZAC spirit and hope we still display such things.
We probably do when fighting bushfires or a ‘mate’ is in trouble. We probably don’t when fighting for the petrol bowser during fuel strikes.
Which brings me back to the sand. The sand is from the beach at Gallipoli, the very sand that those troops stomped on and no doubt cursed. (Imagine running through sand with rifles, stores, equipment and such, yeeech!) Now however it is a tangible bit of our history.
So tomorrow is ANZAC day and while it is an enjoyable public holiday, it is also a day of pride and remembering for many with veterans of any war or their descendants march in parades through the streets.
Speaking of bravery, I am off to the north of Australia to hunt for wild animals. Join over the next few days and let’s try not to get eaten.
