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Saturday November 2nd 2024

Gallipoli | 1981

Peter Weir’s account of the tragic WW1 campaign (when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps suffered shocking casualties after a badly organised attempt to secure the tactically important Dardanelles Strait in Turkey) was made mainly in South Australia.

The ‘West Australia’ home of Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) is Beltana is a a historic site and little more than a ghost town (population 12), about 335 miles north of Adelaide, in the Flinders Mountain Range, South Australia.

The ‘western Australian’ desert Archy crosses with Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) is the dry salt flat of Lake Torrens National Park, to the west of the Flinders range. The two roads into the park are on private property and are not public access routes – you will need permission to use the roads or to camp along the roadside.

‘Perth’ railway station is the grand 1928 Adelaide Railway Station, North Terrace at Station Road, Adelaide.

There was a little filming outside Australia, though. The Egyptian bazaar scenes, though, really are the souks of Cairo.

‘Anzac Cove’, site of the disastrous battle, was filmed near Coffin Bay, about 30 miles west of Port Lincoln, down on the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula on Spencer Gulf.

A few miles north of Coffin Bay itself is Farm Beach, and from here a dirt road leads north to the site where the battle was filmed – which is now called Gallipoli Beach.