Sydney's Camp Gallipoli sleepout to go ahead after initial rain postponement
|
Version 0 of 1. Sydney’s Camp Gallipoli commemorative sleepout has been saved by a last-minute change of venue, after organisers initially announced its postponement. The overnight event was scheduled to begin on Friday, the evening before the Anzac Day centenary commemorations. But three days of severe weather in Sydney had made the venue in Centennial park unsafe. Several ponds in the park flooded on Wednesday and grounds remained damp the following day. The chief executive of the Camp Gallipoli Foundation, Chris Fox, said in a media release the foundation’s priority was the safety of attendants and that it would have been irresponsible to allow the event to go ahead. But after what he said was an “outpouring of support” for the event, it was transferred to the nearby Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park. It was the kind of support that made Australia “so unique”, Fox said. The Entertainment Quarter is a series of paved streets beside Fox Studios Australia in Moore Park, with shops, cinemas and a small oval. Half of the 6,500 attendees will be sleeping outdoors, the other half indoors, spread between the Hordern Pavilion and Royal Hall of Industries. Tickets for the original event remain valid for the new venue. Events in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Auckland remain scheduled as planned. The camp has been marketed as an opportunity to “commemorate the deeds of those brave Anzacs” with schools and families “sleeping out under the same stars the original Anzacs did 100 years ago”. The Sydney event was due to feature live performances from Jon Stevens and Mahalia Barnes and a screening of Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, the war epic The Water Diviner. “You will learn, sing, eat, drink, laugh, (and cry) but most importantly you will be together,” the event website said. Among the items offered for sale on the event’s website is a $275 deluxe Camp Gallipoli Anzac swag. Each features a service number that belonged to one of the 50,000 original Anzacs who served at Gallipoli. Target has been selling a line of Camp Gallipoli-related items, including candles, T-shirts, totes and duffle bags, with a portion of sales going back to the event. Last week it withdrew from the line a branded beanie hat, hoodie and stubbie holder following a complaint from the Department for Veterans Affairs. The federal minister for education, Christopher Pyne, also supported the event, describing it as “a unique occasion to explore what it must have been like for those young Anzac soldiers who gathered in large recruiting camps before heading off to fight in unknown lands, thousands never returning, fighting and dying at Gallipoli”. The Gallipoli landing of the first world war has been framed in popular culture as an important milestone for the national consciousness of modern Australia. More than 8,000 soldiers died in the course of the nine-month campaign or from related injuries. Letters from diggers who took part in the campaign describe the terror of being overwhelmed by enemy forces and the difficulty of fighting in appalling conditions, including muddy terrain from intermittent rain. In a letter to his mother, Private Roy Howard Denning wrote: “For an hour or more I struggled on slipping every now and again right down the side where the earth was very loose, making my already wet and heavy clothes still heavier with the mud that hung to them. “About 8pm or perhaps later, it came on to rain, although not heavy it added to the darkness and misery of the already miserable state of affairs, particularly in the case of the wounded.” |