Hey everyone back in Australia ,
Today we woke up bright and early to be picked up by Colin Gillard our tour guide and Jerome the bus driver.
We trekked it to the Second Division memorial in Mont St. Quentin where Colin shared some of his expansive knowledge with us. He explained the monstrous task that the Second Division soldiers were faced with at Mont St. Quentin.
After this Colin took us to look at his own project, a group of trenches around the area that he is making open for the public to view. We were the first ever group to see these trenches.
The next item on our agenda was the town of Peronne, where we went to the Historial de la Grand Guerre museum to have lunch. After lunch we travelled to Heath cemetery.
This was a very emotional time as Sherstyn viewed the grave of a relative that fought in the war. Even in this small cemetery there was a huge amount of graves, this truly shows the magnitude of the Great War.
Next we went to the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneax, where we held our own ceremony. The ceremony was amazing, with us singing our own national anthem and Jenny playing the eerie Last Post and Reveille.
Once we had looked around the memorial and paid our respects, Jerome took us to the town of Villers-Bretonneax. In this small town we went to the school which was rebuilt after the war with the funds raised by schools in Victoria. The school is made to be like an average Australian school, it was built to be a living memorial for the Australian soldiers that fought in the war.
Once we had our photo in the Arc De Triumph formation, we went and looked around the Australian war museum which contained a model of one of the battle grounds.
After a long day we travelled to our new home of Arras and dropped our bags off at Hotel Moderne.
Dinner was our next objective, at a seafood restaurant close to our hotel. Almost everyone tried snails, which Mrs Walkerden especially enjoyed. Finally we walked back to our hotel where everyone was glad to get some sleep.
Lachlan and Liam
J
