The Lemnos Gallipoli Memorial will be unveiled today in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. The event is open to the public and will take place at 11.00 am, exactly one hundred years after hundreds of nurses arrived on the island near the killing fields of Gallipoli.
Consisting of two statues – of a nurse and a wounded digger – the sculptures were created by Victorian sculptor Peter Corlett, whose works include the bronze sculpture Simpson and his donkey which stands in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial, and the Cobbers statue erected at Fromelles in northern France, a version of which can be seen at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.
The island of Lemnos was the Allies’ main embarkation point for the Gallipoli landings in 1915 and a major supply base and field hospital throughout the Dardanelles campaign and home to about 60,000 Anzac troops and nurses.
The memorial was funded through individual donations and grants from the federal and state government and the City of Port Phillip.
Its inauguration in Foote Street Square next to the Gasworks arts precinct will take place in the presence of descendants of nurses and diggers who served on the island in 1915.
Interested in Greece’s connection to the Gallipoli campaign? See this week’s Good Life feature ‘A voyage to Imbros’ on Page 14.