Get Away with Dre – Anzac Day Walks
There are different ways we can commemorate the service of everyone who gave their lives, or gave themselves up mentally and physically, by being part of a war.
As well as The Dawn Service, or playing 2-up, you can commemorate the day by getting outdoors and going for a walk.
Splendour Rock – Megalong Valley, Blue Mountains
This walk remembers how 13 service men and women who didn’t return from the Second World War lived, not how they suffered. This walk commemorates 13 bushwalkers who were part of bushwalking clubs in the Blue Mountains.
You can get to Splendour Rock via different routes. There are a few options at the start of Carlons Farm and they’re about 15 kms one-way in length.
There are several creek crossings, so just to be safe, you shouldn’t be doing the trail a few days after it’s been raining.
A favourite way is via Narrow Neck Trail and Tarros Ladder – 44.7kms out & back. This starts at Katoomba, at Glenraphael Drive near the Narrow Neck Pump Station.
You can do this over multiple days, we’ve done part of this trail by bike. Both trails are challenging, but the view at the end is breathtaking on a cloudless day. You will find a plaque at the end with the inscription “In memory of bushwalkers who fell in WWII. Their splendour shall never fade”
Newcastle Memorial Walk – NSW
The Newcastle Memorial Walk was constructed to commemorate the men and women from the Hunter that served.
It’s a long cliff top walkway that links Newcastle’s Strezelecki Lookout to Bar Beach. The walk winds around the cliff edge and gives you awesome views of the coastline and city, with views stretching into the Hunter Valley
There’s a 160 metre cliff top bridge with steel silhouettes of soldiers inscribed with up 11,000 names of people who enlisted in WW1 from the Hunter Valley.
The walks also links to Council’s Bathers Way – a 6km coastal walk that links Newcastle’s beaches from Merewether Ocean Baths to Nobbys Beach.
Anzac Trail – Cairns, QLD
The Cairns Region ANZAC Trail takes you to memorial parks, cemeteries and war memorials. Stretching from the north at Trinity Beach, to Babinda in the south.
You can do the trail over the weekend or break it up into many mini walks.
A few highlights to visit:
- Babinda Anzac Park – The public toilets there used to be a reinforced concrete air raid shelter back in 1942 when the area was threatened by Japanese bombings in WW2.
- Cairns on The Esplanade, the Cenotaph – The clock face at the very top is fixed on the time 4:28am, the time of the first landings on Gallipoli.
- Cairns Wharf – This was the departure point for all newly enlisted troops heading for overseas service.
- Tobruk Pools in Cairns – Recently renovated aquatic sports facility, originally dedicated to the Second WW – in memory of the ‘Rats of Tobruk’. But it also includes a contemporary steel pipe sculpture at the entrance – which is a commemoration to WW1 – the structure portrays the barbed wire entanglements on the French Belgian border
