Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War

During our family Easter Road Trip around the North Island, we ended up in Wellington for the day. While the girls went to the New Zealand Archives that shed some light on our Croatian ancestors, Pappy and I visited the Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War exhibition at Te Papa Museum.

Easter and ANZAC Day fell within the same week so it seemed fitting to check out the exhibition which was produced in joint partnership with Te Papa and Weta Workshop….yes the folks behind the Lord of the Rings etc.

Gallipoli claimed the lives of 2,779 New Zealanders and the exhibition takes you on a journey of 8 ordinary New Zealander’s who were in Gallipoli, Turkey.

Each giant sculpture (2.4 times human scale) captures a moment in time during the 8 month campaign…their struggles and their pains…their trials…from Private Jack Dunn…

…he was too sick to be on the front line hence he was put on sentry duty and one night he was found by an officer, fast asleep. This was a serious offence during wartime..he was court-martialled and sentenced to death.

There is a photograph in the exhibition of Jack standing in front of his comrades while an officer reads out the death sentence.

Jack’s death sentence was overturned; he was the only New Zealander serving at Gallipoli to be given the death sentence.

When Jack returned to front line, he was to die with his comrades at the Battle of Chunuk Bair.

Lottie Le Gallais served on the hospital ship, Maheno…before she arrived into Gallipoli, she learnt that her brother was killed in action…

…via her letters which were returned to her unopened. This is the moment she learnt that her brother, Leddie was killed in action.

Lottie returned back to New Zealand on the hospital ship; while the ship would make many more trips to the war zone, Lottie only made the one trip.

Private Rikihana Carkeek from Ngāti Raukawa and Corporal Friday Hawkins, from Ngāti Kahungunu were two Maori soldiers that were part of the machine gun team during the Battle for Chunuk Bair…

…these two brave men, took over the machine gun after their comrades were killed in action.

Lieutenant Colonel Percival Fenwick, was a 45 year old surgeon during the Gallipoli campaign…

…his sculpture shows the moment when he knows that he is unable to save a wounded New Zealander solider, Jack Aitken from Canterbury.

The detailing and vulnerability of each sculpture is truly incredible as you would expect from the folks at Weta Workshop, who spent 24,000 hours to create all the sculptures in the exhibition. Over the years I’ve visited many World 1 & 2 exhibitions around the world and for me this is definitely one of the most emotional and engaging.