Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp.

779–794, 2003
 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0160-7383/$30.00
www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
doi:10.1016/S0160-7383(03)00025-2

GALLIPOLI THANATOURISM
The Meaning of ANZAC
Peter Slade
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

Abstract: Thanatourism can be defined according to the motivations of those who engage
in it. People who visit the sites of death are often motivated by curiosity over the deaths
themselves. There are however, cases where such curiosity is not about death; and those who
seek the experience cannot be considered as thanatourists. This paper argues for a tightening
of the thanatourism definition by excluding people motivated to visit death sites for other
reasons. This is illustrated by the example of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders
who visit Gallipoli every year. Keywords: thanatourism, Gallipoli, ANZAC, World War I, death.
 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Résumé: Le thanatourisme à Gallipoli: la signification d’Anzac. Le thanatourisme peut être

défini suivant les motivations des participants. Les visiteurs aux sites de la mort sont pour
la plupart poussés par la curiosité des morts elles-mêmes. Il y a pourtant des cas où il ne
s’agit pas d’une curiosité de la mort, et ceux qui cherchent une autre sorte d’expérience
ne doivent pas se considérer comme des thanatouristes. Cet article propose une révision de
la définition du thanatourisme pour exclure ceux qui visitent des lieux de la mort pour
d’autres raisons. On donne l’exemple des milliers d’Australiens et de Néo-Zélandais qui
visitent Gallipoli chaque année. Mots-clés: thanatourisme, Gallipoli, Anzac, Première guerre
mondiale, mort.  2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
At dawn on April 25, 1915, Australian soldiers went into battle
against Turks at Gallipoli. New Zealanders followed them at around
9:15 am on the same day. About eight months later, during the night
of December 19, 1915, the combined force withdrew from the penin-
sula by boarding ships. The evacuation was carried out with great ste-
alth and no lives were lost. These summary facts point to a military
defeat for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and
the rest of the allied force involved, yet the debacle gave rise to the
legend of the army, the introduction of some new words into the
English language, and a belief that the people from the two countries
were different from those originating from the United Kingdom. How-
ever, probably the greatest significance of Gallipoli for Australians and

Peter Slade (Faculty of Business, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore DC, Qld
4558, Australia. Email <[email protected]>) has research interests in labor economics, labor
relations, the economics of crime, small business, finance, university drop out rates, and
some history. His previous research interest includes forestry economics and technological
change. Before becoming an academic he worked in forestry in Australia and New Zealand.

779
780 THANATOURISM

New Zealanders is that it marks and represents the psychological birth-

place of both countries as nations.
There can be few, if any, other places and instances in the world
where a battle site marks the birth of a nation, thousands of kilometres
away from it, and fighting which represents an ostensible defeat. It is
for this reason that the case of Australians and New Zealanders visiting
the battlefield of Gallipoli probably represents something more than
thanatourism. While a case might be made that tourism to such battle
grounds as Waterloo, the Somme, and Normandy is in decline, or is
relatively unimportant economically, Gallipoli attracts thousands of
Australians and New Zealanders every year, and the numbers are
increasing. These tourists, in part, come to gain a slightly better under-
standing of who they are and where they come from. Therefore, such
people are probably not thanatouristically motivated, at least in the
sense suggested by Seaton. Thanatourism can have multiple definitions
and it is possible that Australians and New Zealanders visiting the Galli-
poli peninsula are not motivated in the sense he suggests (1996, 1999).
Broadly, this article first considers the issue of thanatourism and some
possible shortcomings. MacCannell’s (1976) ideas are employed to
examine the process of site sacralization. In this way, the importance
of Gallipoli to Australians and New Zealanders is highlighted, thus
establishing the contention that their visits are not motivated by thanat-
ourism, as the Seaton thesis suggests.

THANATOURISM
Thanatourism, also known as dark tourism (Foley and Lennon
1996), has been described by Seaton as “travel to a location wholly, or
partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters
with death…” (1996). He has suggested a typology of thanatourism,
comprising five categories. First, people have traveled to witness public
enactments of death. This behavior has become socially unacceptable
and examples of it include gladiatorial combats of ancient Rome, polit-
ical executions, and public hangings. Its modern manifestations
include gazing at car crashes by passing motorists, ship, and ferry sink-
ings close to the shore and terrorist explosions. The second dimension
to thanatourism is travel to see sites of individual or mass deaths after
they have occurred. Examples of this include sites of past atrocities
(such as Auschwitz, the gallows from where Ned Kelly was hung in the
old Melbourne jail) and the sites of mass shootings (including Hoddle
Street in Melbourne and battlefield visits). Next, visits to interment
sites and memorials to the dead are considered a facet of thanatourism.
Such sites include graveyards, catacombs, war memorials, cenotaphs,
and the like. Fourth, travel to view the material evidence or symbolic
representations of particular deaths, in locations unconnected with
their occurrence, is a type of thanatourism. Included at this level are
visits to museums, wax works, and so on. Last, Seaton (1996) has
argued that travel for re-enactments or the simulation of death is than-
atourism. Passion plays at Oberamegau and battle re-enactments like
 PETER SLADE 781

those currently popular over the American Civil War are examples
of thanatourism.
Seaton argued that thanatourism is extremely popular and specu-
lated as to its motivation. He suggested that it “is hardly an exagger-
ation to suggest that in the midst of many tourism forms of life, we are
in death”. According to him, the stimulus of war has been a principal
energizer of thanatourism in history and modern times. He then went
on to give some examples, such as epic history and poetry as under-
pinning the itinerary of the Grand Tour. He also used Waterloo as a
case study of thanatourism, describing its development and meanings
to British people (1996, 1999).
There are some shortcomings with Seaton’s thesis. In his 1996 con-
tribution, he used the medieval concept of thanatopsis as the basis
for the formulation of thanatourism. Thanatopsis is largely a process
concerned with getting people used to the idea of death. Modern than-
atourism would not seem to be concerned with this. Indeed the new
conception seems more akin to Freud’s idea that the constraints of
modern life are more than most people can endure and that a prefer-
ence for chaos (which he called the death instinct, or thanatos) often
prevails over the instincts of people to maintain a common humanity.
The acceptance of death as being a part of life, and the idea that war
or killing can be holiday from life, are far apart. In the same contri-
bution, Seaton also argued that thanatourism was not an absolute
form, but exists across a continuum of intensity, in which death may
not be the single motivation, and that the interest in death varies from
being person centered to being generalized. People’s feelings for the
dead might be personal, nationalistic, humanitarian, and so on. How-
ever, it is possible to have nationalistic feelings completely devoid of
death, even in circumstances where this might have been part of the
development of a particular nationalism. The feelings that Australians
and New Zealanders might have in respect of the dead at Gallipoli are
not likely to be for the dead as about them.
If thanatourism is defined according to the motivations of the
people engaged in it, then it remains an empirical issue to ascertain
the reasons why they might be at a particular site where death once
occurred. Thus, some survey techniques would help answer the motiv-
ation issue. The presence of people at places associated with death
does not mean that their motivations are necessarily thanatouristic, or
that people at a battle site are all necessarily thanatourists. In some
cases, people might have traveled to a site associated with death in an
incidental manner. For example, they might have joined a bus tour to
a region that included as part of its itinerary an old battle ground or
a place where a passion play regularly occurs. Further, it would be
appropriate to ask whether those visiting calvary hill are there for than-
atouristic reasons or for more deeply religious reasons. An argument
of this paper is that people, by being present at battlefields as tourists,
or in traveling to them, are not necessarily motivated by thanatouristic
reasons, nor are they necessarily thanatourists, simply because they
might happen to be at a place formerly associated with death. There
are cases of visits for reasons other than dark tourism. Hence, every
782 THANATOURISM

year thousands of Australians and New Zealanders go to Gallipoli

because that is the place and a point in historical time at which their
respective nations came into being in a very real and profound man-
ner. In many ways, both countries’ contemporary histories start at, and
proceed from, Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

Story and Myth

For many Australians and New Zealanders, Gallipoli has become the
legendary place where their nations were conceived, albeit in a de facto
sense. But, both had come into being some years before. On January
1, 1901, the British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South
Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia federated to
become the independent Commonwealth of Australia. The former col-
onies became states within the new nation. It was something of a
remarkable union at that time in that the new country came into being
without a war of independence and with no blood being shed. The
people of Australia were proud to be a self governing part of the British
Empire, and the outbreak of the First World War was greeted with
much enthusiasm.
Prior to the war, Australia had instituted a program of compulsory
military training, whereby males between 14 to 20 years old underwent
16 days training per year. Thus, Australia became the first English
speaking country to introduce compulsory military training in peace-
time (Kelly 2001). People undergoing such training were not com-
pelled to serve overseas, although it has been estimated that 15% of
the Australian Imperial Force that served overseas were products of
the scheme (Kelly 2001).
Soldiers’ first taste of war as Australians was at Gallipoli, and it was
here that in many ways the country has its de facto psychological and
cultural origins. Gallipoli was an ostensible defeat and there was not
that much Australian (and New Zealand) blood spilt there. The whole
campaign cost 26,111 Australian casualties, including 8,141 deaths.
This represented a casualty of about 80% of Australian soldiers
engaged. For the First World War as a whole, Australia lost 61,919
soliders killed and 155,000 wounded. In total, 416,809 service people
enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and of these 324,000 served
overseas. They were all volunteers, and given a population of fewer
than 5 million, Australia’s losses were catastrophic indeed. Yet, for most
nationals it is the name of Gallipoli that has legendary status as the
place where “The Great Southern Land” was born.
New Zealand’s story is a little different. Despite being asked to join
in the Australian federation, it still decided to go it alone. Broadly
speaking, the colony of New Zealand was granted a constitution in
1852, and four years later received the right of responsible govern-
ment. In 1891, New Zealand representatives participated in an Aus-
tralasian Federal Convention where a draft constitution was prepared
for consideration. Subsequently, fear of domination led the New Zeal-
anders to reject the idea of joining the Australian Commonwealth. New
Zealand continued as a self-governing colony until 1907, when use was
 PETER SLADE 783

made of the title “Dominion” both in the Colonial Conference of April

and in the Governor-General’s “Speech from the Throne” in Welling-
ton on June 21. New Zealanders celebrated the privilege of Dominion
Status on November 26, 1907. It organized a compulsory military train-
ing scheme a short time after Australia. Males between 14 to 30 were
liable for part time training. Boys between 14 and 18 served in the
senior cadets, and those 18 to 25 served as part time territorial soldiers
with regionally organized and affiliated battalions. Service in the
reserve was a requirement from age 25 to 30.
As was the case in Australia, New Zealanders were enthusiastic about
the outbreak of war, and Gallipoli was the place where they first fought
in the war. Casualties at Gallipoli were 2,721 dead and 4,752 wounded
out of a total of 8,450 committed to the campaign. This gives an 80%
casualty rate, which is eerily the same as Australians’. Consideration of
the New Zealand casualty rate for the entire First World War reveals
some doleful statistics. From a population of less than 1 million, the
percentage of eligible manpower recruited was 19.35. The number sent
overseas was more than 100,000, and of these nearly 17,000 were killed
and more than 41,000 wounded. This casualty rate, in proportion to
the total population, was the highest in the British Empire. A New
Zealand writer commented, “…the next generation did not need to
be told that the angel of death had passed over the land; they heard
the beating of its wings” (Lee 1985:156).
As happened in Australia, the New Zealand commemorative focus
of the First World War became ANZAC day, April 25, which is the
day of the Gallipoli landing. The myth grew in both countries that an
evolution of national spirit had begun at Gallipoli; that both countries
came of age on April 25, 1915. Major Fred Waite, official historian of
the New Zealand contribution put it this way: “Before the war we were
an untried insular people; after ANZAC we were tried and trusted”
(1919:189).
Obviously the ANZAC casualties, as a proportion of soldiers engaged
in battle, were among the worst of the combatants at Gallipoli. In absol-
ute terms, their losses were not as great as the other nations (Table 1),
and they are included in British casualties. Generally speaking, casualty
figures run at 50% of total soldiers engaged for both sides, not 80%.

Table 1. Total Casualty Figures of the Gallipoli Campaign

Allies Turks

Soldiers Engaged British 410,000

French 79,000
Total 489,000 Approx. 500,000
Casualties British 205,000
French 47,000
Total 252,000 Estimated 251,309

Source: Moorhead (1973:302). The casualty figures include killed, wounded, missing,
died of wounds and evacuated sick.
784 THANATOURISM

These figures might explain in part why the legend of the ANZAC
began at Gallipoli. The casualties indicate that Australia and New Zea-
land took on more than their fair share of the work.
The extreme potency of Gallipoli in the psyche of Australians and
New Zealanders might be largely attributed to the idea of the birth-
place of their nations. A question remains why the idea of this origin
had its genesis in the first place. Moreover, all the attendant, if possibly
lesser, myths would remain unexplained by a simple recapitulation of
the story. The process of the creation of the myth, as well as some
telling of the story, would shed light on the subject. The aim is to show
why the visitations of Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli are
other than thanatourism, something more profound.
MacCannell (1976) has suggested that certain sites visited by tourists
and others gain their potency as myths and crowd pullers as a result
of a marking process. This makes them meaningful through a type of
semiotic process differentiating them from lesser sites, and results in
“sight sacralization”. Thus, the area or object assumes a near- or part-
religious aspect in the view of those who visit it, and their journey of
visitation might well be described as a pilgrimage. MacCannell (1976)
maintained that there are five marking processes that lead to sight
sacralization: naming, framing, and elevation, enshrinement, mechan-
ical reproduction, and social reproduction. These five are considered
in turn, using the Australian and New Zealand view of Gallipoli as
an example.

Naming
Marx once said that those who give names to things are possessed
of great power (Marx 1962:22). The names of battles tend to be those
given by the victors. Gallipoli represented a defeat for the Allies and
a victory for the Turks. It achieved a mythical status for Anatolian peas-
ants, and peasants around the Golden Horn, just as much as for any
of the invaders who fought over it. In the Gallipoli area itself, a number
of smaller sites or bridgeheads became the foci of the struggle, and
have themselves assumed the mythical status. Most of these names are
given by the Allies. Thus, Helles, ANZAC and Suvla describe broad
areas of combat, but within each of these a number of named geo-
graphical features, as well as a tree, take prominence in the story of
Gallipoli, as denominated by the Allied side. They are important in
the mythology of Gallipoli to Australians and New Zealanders and in
the ANZAC legend. Names such as “The Nek”, “Baby 700”, “Pope’s”,
“Quinn’s”, “Shrapnel Gully”, and “Lone Pine” evoke for Australians
and New Zealanders images of the struggles of antiquity. Chunuk Bair
is of particular significance to New Zealanders alone. They captured
and held its heights briefly on August 8, 1915, and looked down upon
the narrows of the Dardanelles. Given that the Allies emerged from
the First World War as victors, it seems that both sides have agreed to
the name of Gallipoli for the series of battles fought there in 1915,
but the narrow and particular sites were named by the Allies.
There was a conscious and successful attempt to compare the
 PETER SLADE 785

struggles around Gallipoli, and at ANZAC in particular in 1915 with

the mythologies of antiquity. The campaign was waged beside the Dar-
danelles which was the ancient Hellespont. The sun rose each morning
over Troy. It is the area in which Homer’s Iliad was set, and Leander
is said to have swum the narrows to be with Hero. Compton MacKen-
zie, who was a Gallipoli survivor, compared the Australians with heroes
of antiquity, such as Ajax, Diomed, Hector, and Achilles (MacKenzie
1929). The name “ANZAC” itself has a certain Homeric ring to it, but
it was constructed by accident, and there is some controversy as to who
constructed it. One view has it that two Australian sergeants at the
Australian Army and New Zealand Corps headquarters at Shepheard’s
Hotel in Cairo cut a rubber stamp with the initials “ANZAC” for regis-
tering papers. When a code name was needed for the Corps, a British
officer suggested the same. The name was widely in use by January
1915 (Moorhead 1973:92). Another version is that it was a New Zea-
land clerk who cut a rubber stamp with the initials. Some time later
it was taken as the telegraphic code word for the Corps (McGibbon
and Goldstone 2000).
The acronym ANZAC very quickly became a new word in the English
language. After the evacuation from Gallipoli, two corps were formed
in France, and after the end of the war, returned Australian and New
Zealand soldiers became known as ANZACs. It also means or exemp-
lifies an independent spirit in soldiering, a devil-may-care attitude and
a capacity to remain clear headed and innovative in difficult circum-
stances. Mulgan, writing about New Zealanders in the Second World
War, probably captured some of the meaning of being an ANZAC,
when he wrote,
They were mature men these New Zealanders—quiet and shrewd and
sceptical. They had none of the tired patience of the Englishmen, nor
that automatic discipline that never questions orders to see if they
make sense. Moving in body, detached from their homeland they
remained quiet and aloof and self-contained. They had a confidence
in themselves such as New Zealanders rarely have, knowing themselves
as good as the best in the world could bring against them (1967:15).

Probably the same could be said for Australians, though they might
be noisy, and always confident of themselves.
Thomson (1994) has suggested that the soldiers preferred to call
themselves “Diggers”, which was originally a New Zealand term for the
Kauri Gum Diggers who worked in the north of that country, mining
tree resin for a varnish industry. Digger was used because it was of
the soldiers’ own making and it signified their own distinctive culture.
Though this culture asserted common national identities, it was mainly
the identity of those who were not commissioned officers (other
ranks). The term “digger” did not carry patriotic and ancient Greek
meanings and implications that informed the language of ANZAC. It
was, in part, an element of a counter-culture, and not really for official
and home consumption. Through time, however, the word did make
its way into more widespread usage. Today, any Australian service
people seem to be known colloquially as Diggers. Paradoxically, con-
786 THANATOURISM

temporary New Zealand service personnel are not known as such, even
though the word came from their country.
Much of the initial naming of things associated with the Australian
(and to a lesser extent, New Zealand) view of Gallipoli was a result of
historical accident, including examples noted earlier, as well as the
geographical features, the word ANZAC itself, and so on. The responsi-
bility for the attaching of meanings to many of the things associated
with Gallipoli and ANZAC can be laid in large measure at the door of
Charles Bean, who was a war correspondent and later the official his-
torian of Australia’s effort in the First World War. He is generally
regarded as the most influential of those who contributed to the cre-
ation of Australia’s ANZAC legend. His was essentially a naming role,
though boundaries are seldom clearcut and much of his work can be
seen as mechanical reproduction. Therefore, he can be discussed in
naming and, to a lesser extent, in both types of reproduction
(mechanical and social). Bean was one of those who explored the
fighting qualities and character of the Australians and was largely
responsible for the initial development of the idea that they were dif-
ferent from other British forces. He was the early and major mythmak-
er.
There seems to be little doubt that the Australians and New Zealand-
ers were different from other British forces during the First World War.
But it can be reasonably understood that as things are named, so they
become real in their consequences. The Australians were familiar with
Bean’s writings from an early stage of the war, as well as at Gallipoli,
and as a consequence, probably came to revel in the differences
between themselves and other troops. They gave up saluting, mateship
became pronounced, and they became (along with the New Zealanders
and Canadians) shock troops and the British army’s major strike wea-
pon by the end of the war. These differences (real, imagined, and self
fulfilling in their consequences) led to and fed into the later belief
that Gallipoli represented considerably more than a place where
ANZACs came into being and where differences between them and
other troops came to be seen. It was viewed as the place where Australia
and New Zealand had their geneses as modern countries.
From the very beginning, Bean set about comparing the Australian
military effort at Gallipoli with the idea that it represented the birth
of a modern country. It was but a short step from a national identity
occupying center stage to the nation itself. Thus, the country came
into being on a scrub covered hillside where Europe and Asia meet.
It should not be surprising that Gallipoli represented the birth of Aus-
tralia. It took Gallipoli to enable Australia and New Zealand to emerge
as two countries in being as well as in fact.
Non-Australian and New Zealand writers discerned something
unique and special about Gallipoli for the two countries. Ellis Ashmead
Bartlett wrote about the qualities of the Australians and New Zealand-
ers at Gallipoli, and saw them as coming from new nations. Since then,
writers and historians have written about the emergence of both coun-
tries, and about Gallipoli as a kind of birth place. Geoffrey Moorhouse
wrote, “The silence of Gallipoli is so powerful that it intimidates some
 PETER SLADE 787

visitors. Young Australians, boisterously loud elsewhere, speak in low

voices here, deeply conscious that they are exploring, as was promised
them from birth, a national shrine” (Moorhouse 1992:233). Here is
the Australian, Thomson, “At Gallipoli, and then on the Western
Front, the ANZACs proved the character of Australian manhood for
all the world to see, and through their victories and sacrifices, estab-
lished a nation in spirit as well as in name.” (1994:26). The New Zea-
lander, Pugsley wrote,
ANZAC day has grown to mean much more than the memory of a
landing in the dawn by an Australian division. It is part of the story
of our country [meaning New Zealand] at war, of the history of New
Zealand for much of this century, and a symbol of a growing con-
sciousness of our own identity” (1984:355).
Moorhead, another Australian, wrote that, “the landing at ANZAC cove
by Australian and New Zealand troops on 25 April, 1915, became a
legend and fused a sense of nationhood in both countries” (1973:305).
The idea of Gallipoli was transformed into something markedly dif-
ferent from a battlefield to the extent that today, it is highly unlikely
that Australians and New Zealanders visit for the same reasons that
say, British people visit Waterloo. Seaton’s thanatourism thesis misses
the point about this particular travel phenomenon, and furthermore
probably claims too much about what thanatourism is (1996, 1999).

Framing and Elevation

MacCannell (1976) argued that just as venerated objects are put on
pedestals, or put into glass cases, or have frames put around them in
order that people might see them, so are many tourism sites framed
and elevated. In the case of battlegrounds, monuments, cenotaphs,
graves, and statues are often erected. Such has occurred at Gallipoli
as part of the process of site sacralization. There are some unique fea-
tures of framing and elevation at Gallipoli that set it apart from other
battlegrounds. First, the peninsula is relatively untouched and it conse-
quently looks much the same today as it did in 1915. Second, many
of the dead are buried where they fell, particularly at ANZAC Cove,
and there are numerous small grave sites across the area. Third, the
entire area of the battles has been declared a war cemetery, meaning
that in some ways the whole piece of land has been framed and elev-
ated to the tourists’ gaze. Fourth, some of the monuments scattered
throughout the site, while large to the point of being megaliths, are
very simple, with simple inscriptions.
One of the most poignant stone memorials was built by the victors,
the Turks, at ANZAC Cove. It carries the words of Kemal Ataturk
(written below exactly as they appear on the stone plinth at Gallipoli).
It reads:

Those heroes that shed their blood

and lost their lives…
You are now living in the soul of a friendly country
788 THANATOURISM

Therefore rest in peace

There is no difference between the Johnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
Here in this country of Ours…
You, the mothers
Who sent their sons from faraway countries
Wipe away your tears
Your sons are now living in our bosom
And are in peace.
After having lost their lives in this land they have
Become our sons as well.

Moorhouse wrote, “The Australian graves are moving for their unaf-
fected eloquence” (1992:235). The gravestones give the soldier’s rank,
name, and unit, as well as the date of death. Inscribed on many of
them are messages from next of kin, so that Trooper E. W. Lowndes
of the 3rd Light Horse has “Well done Ted” underneath his name and
details. Private J. J. R. Carroll, 6th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force,
has “My Jim Gave His Life For Freedom. Loved & Remembered By His
Dad”. One of the most moving is the case of Private G. R. Grimwade,
Australian Army Medical Corps. His family brought some stone from
their house in Melbourne and placed it on his grave. The inscription
on it reads, “This stone from the home of George R. Grimwade, Mel-
bourne, Australia, was brought and placed here in ever loving remem-
brance by his parents, April 1922”.
It is probably something of an Australian national characteristic to
tell others what they think, in simple, straightforward ways. New Zealan-
ders, on the other hand, are more inclined to reticence. Where they
lie, at Hill 60, Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair, and elsewhere, there is a
feeling of silence that pervades the soul, as much as it is an actual
absence of noise. The dead tend to be buried en masse, without mess-
ages from family, and the New Zealand national monument, high
above the others, has the inscription:

“In honour of the soldiers of the

New Zealand Expeditionary Force
8 August 1915 From the
Uttermost Ends of the Earth.”

Many of the New Zealanders were killed en masse, and at Chunuk

Bair, the New Zealand dead lay so thickly in one trench, that another
had to be dug. Where individuals’ grave stones are seen, all that is
inscribed is the person’s name, rank, unit, and date of death.
Nothing more.
The Turks, possibly like the New Zealanders, tended to be a little
more prosaic about their dead. They are buried in mass graves, and
there is a lack of “monumentalism” in their cemeteries. There is, how-
ever, a large bronze statue of a Turkish soldier, a “Mehmet”, over-
looking the narrows, down near the Dardanelles. It gives eloquent testi-
mony to those tough, brave, simple men who kept that famous stretch
of water from the clutches of the invader.
 PETER SLADE 789

It is obvious that the process of erecting inscribed monuments is

both the process of framing and elevation, as well as mechanical repro-
duction. The boundaries are unclear.

Enshrinement
MacCannell has it that enshrinement refers to the point at which
“the framing material that is used has itself entered the first stage of
sacralization” (1976:45). Thus, buildings erected to house important
artefacts, in turn, become attractions. Some obvious examples are the
British Museum, the Louvre, and the Australian War Memorial
museum. Given that Gallipoli has remained relatively unaltered since
the days of 1915, the process of enshrinement would seem to have
bypassed it. This is a little problematical, however, in the sense that
the peninsula itself is, and “frames”, the battle ground. Thus, the pen-
insula is the framing material and has entered into the sacralization
process. This is most unlike other battle sites, possibly apart from those
of the American Civil War which have become national parks.

Mechanical Reproduction
MacCannell has argued that the mechanical reproduction of cultural
phenomena, such as destinations and attractions, intensifies and elev-
ates them. Mass media advertising is probably the quintessential
exemplar of this phenomenon. For him, “The data of cultural experi-
ences are somewhat functionalized, idealized, or exaggerated models
of social life that are in the public domain, in film, fiction, political
rhetoric, small talk, comic strips, expositions, etiquette and spectacles.
The first part is the representation of an aspect of life on stage, film,
etc.” (1976:23).
Gallipoli provides a pre-eminent case of the importance of media in
site sacralization through mechanical reproduction. The presence and
importance of Charles Bean has already been discussed in the naming
process and in the creation of the ANZAC legend, recognizing the
overlap of naming and mechanical reproduction process. Ellis Ash-
mead Bartlett had an early major role in the mechanical reproduction
of Gallipoli. He was apparently not liked at Allied headquarters, and
was extremely gloomy and pessimistic about the Gallipoli campaign
from a relatively early point. In addition to many newspaper articles,
after the war’s end he wrote, “Despatches From the Dardanelles.”, and
“The Uncensored Dardanelles”.
The significance of these two writers should not be underestimated.
Bean was to write, “The Story of ANZAC” in two volumes, “Gallipoli
Mission”, “Two Men I Knew”, “ANZAC to Amiens”, and “Gallipoli Cor-
respondent”, all of which are about Gallipoli. He is a person partially
responsible for the creation of the ANZAC legend and for its early
mythologizing. According to Thomson, “Almost invariably modern
Australian historians of the Great War acknowledge their debt to Bean,
and very often they draw upon his work for anecdotes and for expla-
nations of the ANZAC experience” (1994:193). Ashmead Bartlett was
790 THANATOURISM

to reinforce and extend Bean’s mythmaking work at ANZAC. He wrote

dispatches on the heroism of the soldiers from the first day at Gallipoli,
and is inadvertently party to the creation of one of Gallipoli’s miscon-
ceptions.
The Australians went ashore at dawn on April 25, while the New
Zealanders followed them later in the morning. To the latter who went
ashore that day, the Australians deserved much credit alone. One of
them wrote in praise of the Australians, “No orders, no proper military
‘team work’, no instructions, just absolute heroism”, as noted by Har-
dey 1915 (quoted in Pugsley 1915:18). This was a view held by Ashmead
Bartlett as well, and in his initial draft of the despatch of the first day
he wrote only of the Australians. A Naval officer noticed the omission
of the New Zealanders and altered the despatch to include them. The
coverages trumpeted the deeds of ANZAC around the world. Thus, a
legend was born, and still today, New Zealanders hold dawn ceremon-
ies on ANZAC day.
The amount of newspaper writing, books published, radio and tele-
vision programs made, and historical articles written about Gallipoli
defy summarizing. They continue to flow, and there is no point in
attempting to deal with them here. The point is made, however, that
mechanical reproduction of Gallipoli is burgeoning and bolsters the
process of site sacralization. For Australians and New Zealanders alike,
one of the enduring mechanical reproductions of Gallipoli is the story,
painting, and photograph of Simpson and His Donkey, Murphy. Priv-
ate John Simpson Kirkpatrick was a stretcher bearer in the Australian
Field Ambulance. Very early in the campaign he found that with the
assistance of a donkey, he was able to save the lives of many wounded
by taking them to the casualty clearing station. He was tireless in his
work and showed great courage under fire. He was eventually killed
in May 1915, and his story passed into the legend and lore of selfless
sacrifice. Horace Moore Jones’ painting of Simpson and His Donkey
these days hangs in the Australian War Memorial (2000) in Canberra.
There were, however, several stretcher bearers using donkeys at Galli-
poli and Moore Jones used a photograph of a New Zealander with a
donkey as his model. He was named Henderson and the painting hung
for many years in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. In the
1930s, the Australian government purchased it for the war memorial at
Canberra. Thus, mechanical reproduction can take many turns and
many forms.
Lone Pine was a scene of much carnage, particularly during the
August battles. Seven Victoria Crosses were won there, and in the first
few day’s fighting, something like 4,000 men were killed in its vicinity
(Moorhead 1973:232). Seeds were taken from the solitary tree at Lone
Pine and planted throughout Australia. One of the descendant trees
is planted at the War Memorial Shrine in Melbourne. The tree is there
today for all to see, yet Moorehead says that Lone Pine gained its name
from the fact that the Turks, though supplied with charcoal for their
cooking, had cut down all but a single tree on the ridge for firewood.
On the morning of August 6, 1915, this last tree was apparently felled
(1973:210). How then did this tree’s descendants come to be growing
 PETER SLADE 791

across Australia? There would never be any way of demonstrating that

the trees planted around Australia are not descendants of the original
Lone Pine. The original tree no longer exists.
ANZAC versions of Gallipoli have been depicted on film, mostly
notably in Peter Weir’s film of that name in 1981 (Weir 1984). The
earlier episodes of the television series, “Anzacs”, deals with the Aus-
tralian view of Gallipoli, and one of the producers of the series, John
Dixon, has argued that he was strongly influenced by C.E.W. Bean
(Thomson 1994:196). Without doubt, films are the pre-eminent
mythmakers of the modern time, and various other Australian film
makers have added to the myth of the ANZACs, which have not dealt
with Gallipoli specifically. Some of examples of these include, “The
Light Horsemen”, “1915” and “40,000 Horsemen”.
Over the years, a number of plays have been written about Gallipoli.
From the Australian angle, Ric Throssell wrote, “For Valour” (1976),
which is about the life of his father, who was a light horseman, and
the play, “The One Day of the Year” was written by Alan Seymour
(1985). One play, written by the New Zealander, Maurice Shadbolt,
“Voices of Gallipoli” (2000), has been turned into a film called, “Once
on Chunuk Bair” (1982).
In a curious form of near mechanical reproduction in reverse, the
New Zealand native shrub, the Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) is to
be found growing around the grave sites of the New Zealanders. Sev-
eral years ago, the government arranged to have several of these
planted at the New Zealand national monument, and since then they
have flourished. Presumably they are there to keep the soldiers com-
pany. It is difficult to categorize this act. Is it mechanical reproduction
in reverse, or a form of enshrinement, or a type of framing, or possibly
social reproduction in reverse? Certainly, the Gallipoli Peninsula looks
very much like parts of the New Zealand coastline, particularly around
Wellington, as if it represents an attempt to transpose a social view of
a landscape to another geographical site.
Social Reproduction. According to MacCannell (1976), social repro-
duction is the representation of cultural objects in everyday practice
away from the places where they originated. Thus, some very powerful
symbolic objects are represented in the social environment and
become part of the every day world of people. In this context, during
the 1980s, a piece of coastline near Wellington, New Zealand, was selec-
ted as a site for a memorial for all who fought at ANZAC Cove, because
it looks like it at Gallipoli. The memorial was unveiled by the Turkish
Ambassador to New Zealand, and in part deals with Kemal Ataturk,
the commander of the Turkish forces at Gallipoli. There was some talk
of even renaming the area “Anzac Cove”. When the planting of
Manuka shrubs at Gallipoli is placed against this act of social repro-
duction, it becomes impossible to categorize what form of site sacraliz-
ation is occurring. It would seem to be an attempt to move Gallipoli
to New Zealand, almost as a pilgrim might take pieces of the original
cross of Christ from the Holy Land to a cathedral in Europe.
The power of Gallipoli is writ large throughout Australian and New
Zealand life. In both countries many streets and thoroughfares carry
792 THANATOURISM

the names of aspects of the Gallipoli story. The author has observed
Gallipoli Avenue, Lone Pine Crescent (seemingly a strange admixture
of ANZAC struggle and the Turk’s religion), Anzac Square, various
streets, and a university named Monash, after the Australian general
who was at Gallipoli. In New Zealand, streets have been named after
Andrew Russell who was at Gallipoli and went on to command the New
Zealand division on the western front. There are Gallipoli and ANZAC
army barracks and a class of warships called ANZAC used by the navies
of Australia and New Zealand. Peoples of these two countries to this
day bake ANZAC biscuits. The original recipe was meant for inclusion
into packages for soldiers from home, being Australia and New Zea-
land.

CONCLUSION
The ANZAC legend and Gallipoli are central to the idea of the Aus-
tralian and, to lesser extent, the New Zealand nations. The mythical
aspects of Gallipoli constitute a core and defining great story in the
creation and sustenance of both countries. The two stories are differ-
ent from one another; New Zealand’s is perhaps more muted and
understated, but this quietness adds to the importance of Gallipoli. It
sets them apart from the Australians and thus defines them as different
again. As such, Gallipoli is important to them, but its meanings are
not the same for them as for the Australians. It is not the aim here to
expand on this point, but to suggest that Seaton’s (1996, 1999) thesis
about thanatourism obscures and denies these meanings by attributing
thanatouristic intent to all those who visit Gallipoli.
In visiting the site, Australians and New Zealanders do visit a battle-
field, but the area represents a time and place where their countries
began. Their motives are concerned with nationhood. Generally, they
come to see the place where their great nation building stories hap-
pened. Courage and resourcefulness in the face of adversity, the impor-
tance of mateship, scorn for pretentious authority, and inventiveness
are themes brought to life through stories about “a bloke and a don-
key”, gaining and losing the heights of Chunuk Bair, the invention of
the periscope rifle, and a lone pine tree growing on a ridge, all adding
to the sum of the idea of a nation. Thus, when people who are self
consciously “Australians” or “New Zealanders” visit Gallipoli, they do
so with these things in mind. They mark themselves off from others
through various devices, including accent and idiom, gregariousness,
clothing styles and colors, the wearing of broad rimmed akoubra hats,
and through their songs such as “Waltzing Matilda”, “Click Go The
Shears”, and “Now Is The Hour”. These people have feelings about
the dead at Gallipoli and they know, understand, and commemorate
their deeds, especially their role in helping define their two nations.
Very few have feelings for the dead, at least in the sense suggested by
Seaton (1996).
Seaton admits to the notion of individual motivations as being
important in defining a thanatourist. This is reasonable. To extend it
by arguing for a continuum of motivations and intensities is to admit
 PETER SLADE 793

too much to the idea of thanatourism. But here generalization takes

away some of the potency of the definition. To try to say everything
about something is often to say nothing at all that is useful or relevant.
Through his broad notion, Seaton (1996) has argued that anyone trav-
eling to a location wholly or partially motivated for actual or symbolic
encounters with death is engaging in thanatourism. He then offered
some general thoughts about the motivations of people to become
dark tourists. According to him, “The stimulus of war has been a princi-
pal energizer of thanatourism in history and in modern times”
(1999:132). Very little of this theorizing offers much in the way of
explanation as to the motivations of people touring old battle sites.
However, it offers a process of implication, which is that if someone
is to be found at or near a battle site, they must surely be a thanatourist.
In contradistinction to this, most Australians and New Zealanders who
visit Gallipoli are engaged, to some extent, in a journey of discovering
who they are, where they came from, and what the meanings of their
nations might be in the modern world. In this they are participating
in, and adding to, the myth of Gallipoli.
“Myth” is employed here in the way Barthes (1972) used it. The
events that constituted the military struggle at Gallipoli have been told
in interpretative form from the beginning (as any story must), so much
so that it has been enlarged to become something more than a place
where people killed each other. The characteristics of the soldiers of
two of the countries that fought there have become the stuff of legend
to the extent that their citizens define themselves, in part, by those
characteristics. In some respects, Gallipoli might best be described as
a fetish. The story telling has led to its becoming greater than the
original participants, the story tellers, and the modern visualizers them-
selves. Consequently, the object, the fetish, has come to dominate
them.
For many years Gallipoli remained a lonely and isolated place in
the world, with few tourists. Charles Bean returned there in 1919 to
reconnoitre the old battle sites and to help begin the process of ident-
ifying, burying, and reburying the dead. The War Graves Commission
was formerly established to supervise this work, burying remains more
or less where they were found. Turkish gardeners were employed to
tend the grounds, which were, and are, kept in very tidy condition.
The occasional tourists visiting the area commented on the loneliness
of the peninsula and were struck by the immense silence that pervades
the place. Rising real incomes, an increased interest in the meanings
of Gallipoli, the place of the Antipodes in the history of the modern
world, and the renaissance of interest in Gallipoli over the past 15 years
has seen a burgeoning of tourists from Australia and New Zealand.
There are numerous guided tour operators who now take people
through that part of the world, and the author knows of many who
have visited the site as individuals. All comment on the almost eerie
silence and of the way the wind whistles through the scrub on that
very broken ground. The dead lie in peace. 왎 A
794 THANATOURISM

Acknowledgements—The author wishes to thank Adrian Bull, Tim Bahaire, and Richard
Voase, all of the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, UK, for their helpful com-
ments on the first draft.

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Submitted 27 July 2000. Resubmitted 15 December 2000. Accepted 18 September 2002. Final
version 8 November 2002. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Valene L. Smith