Albany 2 (April 2015)

Returning to Albany feels like coming home. Funny that.

On the parking lot of the Memorial Hill there are interestingly no signs that you cannot occupy a vehicle over night. That helps because we want to visit the museum as well as the monument at the top of the hill.

The museum is very well set up; at the entrance you receive a card with a real person’s name on it, with a bar code. Throughout the exposition you can scan your card for more details about that soldier/officer/nurse. Not all people on the cards survive the war, some return home and die prematurely. My nurse actually was in her 90’s when she passed on. At the end of the route you can leave a message to your person. Children write the darnest things.

We learn about the characters of the ANZAC troops like John KirkPatrick with his donkey –he died- and we learn about the statistics, the casualties, the staggering numbers of lives lost on both sides. We learn about the significance of the symbols. Coming from Europe a lot of this is new to us. We try to understand what it must have been like fighting from the trenches. Why did they do that?

Jolmer and I are affected by the museum and tears are rolling down our cheeks. Such a gruel war.

The children have to write letters –as part of their schoolwork- as if they are at the fighting front, and as if they were still in Australia. They have to make a care package and we bake ANZAC biscuits, of course. This is something we had actually done a couple of times since arriving here in 2006.

The Kids wrote a recipe and background down for Anzac Biscuits. Well worth the read and give it a try if you like. Click here for the link.

The next morning we visit the monument at the top of the hill. A little Bandicoot roams around. What a view over the bay. We can almost picture all the boats in the harbour getting ready for departure. It must have been an impressive sight. There is a lone pine tree as well, grown from one of the seeds from one of the very few pinecones taken from Lone Pine Beach. It all has more meaning now.

We’re glad we went back. Whenever you are in Albany: Memorial hill is well worth a stop.