photohunt: Dusty in Australia & ANZAC Day

My niece sent me these photos taken at the University of Queensland in Australia.


http://tnchick.com/





This is an old post of the red dust in Sydney in September 2009. It blew up to Queensland and even across the Tasman sea to New Zealand. There was a layer of orange dust on our cars this morning here in Auckland.

I asked my family in Australia and my two nieces tell me:

It was very windy when we were hit by the dust storm on Wednesday. There was an inch of dust on everywhere. I was coughing all day and can't breathe properly because it was so dusty & air was really dry.

I spent whole yesterday morning to mop, wipe and clean my house. After I was just about to drink my coffee and relax watch t.v., the news said there might be another one coming this weekend.

F in the GoldCoast

Photos from the outside of my unit around 11.20am, when the storm hasn't fully blown into Brisbane yet. It got worst after that.

S in Brisbane

The photos don't show how bad it is, like she said, she took them before the situation got worst.

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ANZAC Day – 25 April – is probably Australia and New Zealand 's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. It is the commemoration for the fallen. Lest we forget.

Outside, the rain is pelting. The National commemoration is shifted indoors in the National Memorial Museum. On this day, the skies cry and release their tears. A few years past, I joined the march past and it was raining.

When war broke out in 1914, Australia had been a federal commonwealth for only 13 years. The new national government was eager to establish its reputation among the nations of the world. In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in order to open the Dardanelles to the allied navies. The ultimate objective was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey), the capital of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany.

The Australian and New Zealand forces landed on Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Ottoman Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold stroke to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stalemate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915 the allied forces were evacuated, after both sides had suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. Over 8,000 Australian soldiers had been killed. News of the landing on Gallipoli had made a profound impact on Australians at home, and 25 April soon became the day on which Australians remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in the war.

Although the Gallipoli campaign failed in its military objectives, the Australian and New Zealand actions during the campaign left us all a powerful legacy. The creation of what became known as the “ANZAC legend” became an important part of the identity of both nations, shaping the ways they viewed both their past and their future.