Canakkale The Dardanelles is a 61km (28 mile) strait between Europe and Asiatic Turkey. The maximum width is 7km and in the area known as the Narrows, the distance is no more than 1,600 metres. The Dardanelles Straits are overlooked by high cliffs on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Here is the border-line where west and east often in history have clashed despite the efforts of the swift-running waters of the Hellespont to keep them apart. For the Black Sea, fed by the great rivers of Russia, continously empties into the Mediterranean and in ‘ Narrows’ towards the south of the Dardanelles, produces a current almost insurmountable by sail from the south. To this fact Troy, in all probability, owes its origin.

At Canakkale we land and make our way to Troy, brought back in 1871 from the world of legend, where it had been hidden from history, by the magic of Schiliemann’s uninstructed intuition.

Also, its importance with Gallipoli Campaign, The Gallipoli Peninsula has a long and memorable history extending back beyond the Peleponesian Wars. Its rugged landscape and historic towns provide the backdrop to the battlefields of 1915, places of heroism and sacrifice which are of immense national significance to Turks, Australians and New Zealanders.