Australian rowers who will recreate the landing at Gallipoli as part of Anzac Day commemorations this year say the event will show that peace is possible in the modern world.
The rowers are paying tribute to the boatloads of Anzac soldiers who waded in the darkness to the Gallipoli Peninsula on the morning of April the 25th, 1915.
Thousands of those Australians and New Zealanders would never return home after a disastrous campaign, the highlight of which many historians agree was a successful withdrawal from the peninsula.
Fast-forward 100 years, and that Gallipoli dawn landing is taking place once again.
Pip Butt and Alex Salier are members of the all-women's Queenscliff surfboat crew, one of over 80 crews training for the reenactment to take place in Turkey in the days leading up to April 25th.
The team of four has been in training for the event for over six months, mostly at Clontarf beach in northern Sydney.
"A lot of us have got family members who served in World War One and it's a nice way to respect them and respect their memory, as well as the memory of all the other soldiers," says Alex, whose great-uncle Gordon Salier survived Gallipoli. "For any Australian or New Zealand citizen, or anybody who was involved in World War One, this day carries a massive significance."
The Queenscliff crew will share their boat with one other crew. They will take two days to row from Eceabat on the eastern side of the Gallipoli peninsula around to Anzac Cove on the western side.
The surf boat rowers will make seven stops, begining at Eceabat and ending at Anzac Cove.
Temperatures could get as low as three degrees and as high as 20, and wind and water conditions around Gallipoli could vary considerably.
"I just feel it's a way you can show respect back for history and what's happened in the past, as well as something that you love and how you can look and take it forward into the future," says Pip Butt.
"The late author Terry Pratchett said that you're only truly dead when the ripples that you create die away as well. If you think about how the Anzacs have helped and how the life-saving movement itself has been involved in the past, it's only when those ripples die away that those servicemen will ever truly be dead."
On the final day, the surf boat crews will row in to replicate the first wave of 26 landings at Anzac Cove.
The surfboats are a similar shape and size to the boats that brought the Anzac soldiers to the Gallipoli shores 100 years ago, which Pip says will give the rowers a unique perspective on the landings.
She says the event will also help grow the strong post-war friendship between Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.
"And the fact that we'll be rowing alongside Turkish people, we're also going to get a different view point from them. Some of the crews are also from Britain. It wasn't just Australia and New Zealand. There was the Allied forces, there were the Brits, there were some French. There will be the Turks there. It's going to be a big melting pot in mateship, really."
Alex Salier says the thought of meeting so many crews in Anzac Cove gives her goose bumps.
"And to meet in friendship and I guess be able to, in this day and age, show people that peace is possible and that we're all marking and paying respect to our ancestors."
The event is endorsed by Surf Life Saving Australia and the Australian Surf Rowers' League.
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