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| Rainy Lille |
Drove on, stopped at Lille. It was raining and we left after an hour, heading to Peronne. The town is small but the WW1 museum is packed. The campsite is really soaked. The pool is cool.
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| Art in Peronne from a WW1 soldier |
Today we got John, picked up croissants for brekky and went to Villers Bretoneux; it is "Australie en Picardie". Most of the shops are shut. The newsagent asks where we're from and then gives us a bunch of pins with a French and an Australian flag. The Australian flag
is backwards, so it's an even rarer find.
The local school post war rebuild was paid for by some Australian soldier from Victoria. No other French school has a school hall or a little Australian France museum in there with WW1 memorabilia. The town has kangaroos painted around the place a Rue Victoria, and a Rue Melbourne. The Australian memorial is on the edge of town.
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| Rue de Kanga named by Aust soldiers |
Next stop - Le Hamel and Monash's perfect attack that was all complete in 93 minutes. Some German general studied this attack before formulating their blitzgrieg tactics. All the different parts worked together at the right time to overwhelm the defence. Towards the end, a lot of tanks helped sway the war.
Finally the 1916 museum in Albert about life in the trenches. The location is a medieval tunnel. One touching story was of a Scot who carried an injured Englishman get back to a safe area. Just before they arrived, the Scot was also wounded. When they got to hospital, they had beds next to each other. The Scotsman knew he would die, and gave his kilt to the Englishman. Now the kilt is in the museum.
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| Rue de Kanga 2014 |
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| Rue de Kanga 1914 |
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| Waiting for a boat at "Circular Quay" |
We then popped by a few huge craters done by mining engineers going under the enemy trenches. At the first one, I got a personal tour from the owner, while everyone else stayed in the car because of the rain. There's heaps of tunnels hooking up the places around here, but it's not 100% safe to open them up for tourists.
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| Dying to be in there |
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| Rue de Victoria, Villers Bretoneux |
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| Rue de Melbourne, Villers Bretoneux |
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| The town hall, Villers Bretoneux |
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| A hug in Villers Bretoneux |
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| Rue de Melbourne, Villers Bretoneux |
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| They get a few visitors |
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| The Aust memorial, Villers Bretoneux |
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| The memorial got smashed in WW2, Villers Bretoneux |
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| Who bagged the Red Baron? At Le Hamel. |
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| Hercules at Le Hamel |
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| Lochnagar crater - a *lot* of TNT |
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