Gallipoli 1990

In 1990, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and New Zealand Governor-General Paul Reeves travelled to Türkiye, along with 59 of the last surviving Gallipoli veterans and many Australian and New Zealand tourists, for a special Dawn Service at Gallipoli. It was one of the last major commemorations attended by a significant number of surviving veterans of the campaign. This documentary is the story of that pilgrimage by a radio journalist embedded with the project for two weeks.

In 1990, Andrew Woodward was the Bureau Chief at Parliament House, Canberra, for the Australian Radio Network. For the Gallipoli 1990 pilgrimage, the Australian Government chose Andrew as the official commercial radio “pool reporter” and travelled with the veterans, their support crew, and organisers. Andrew produced this documentary using the resources of the Australian Radio Network in mid-1990. It was then provided to the Department of Veterans Affairs as an official audio record of the pilgrimage. The 2025 release is unaltered from the original recording.

Commemorating the 110th anniversary on 25 April 2025, Andrew has released the full two-hour documentary publicly for the first time. It was transferred from 1.5 kilometres of reel-to-reel audio tapes to digital files in March 2025. In the months following its release, Andrew will release digitised copies of his photos and other collected memorabilia. When the digitisation project is complete in 2025, all original ephemera, including the source recordings on cassette, will be donated to the Australian War Memorial for preservation.

This documentary is dedicated to the memory of Bill Hall. Bill was a World War II veteran who, in 1979, set up the First World War Veterans’ Association of NSW and was its patron for many years. In March 1989, he suggested to the then Defence Minister Kim Beazley that the Federal Government should support a commemorative visit to Gallipoli for the 75th anniversary, and this tour was the result.

Lest we forget.

Listen on popular podcast platforms

You can also listen on SoundCloud or link to the RSS feed. Two other versions are available: M4A (compressed) and AIFF (uncompressed) for re-broadcast.

Listen here to the full documentary

The Digger shown in this picture is Alec Campbell from Tasmania. He arrived in Gallipoli in November 1915, aged 16 (having lied about his age to enlist).

A few personal photos

Memorabilia

In 2025, I will scan and publish some memorabilia. I also picked up some keepsakes from Gallipoli in 1990 that can’t be scanned, but they will be photographed and published. Here’s a sample of some of the things I have.