25/04/2026
Pictures in an album, pictures from a war,
Pictures from a soldier, snaps of things he saw,
Captions with the pictures, words describe the scene,
Pictures shot from Anzac Cove, show where men have been.
Twenty-fifth of April, snaps as soldiers land,
Pictures of the hillside, bushy scrub and sand,
‘Barges bringing water, a quart a day for drinking’,
Pictures of troops ‘Feeding’- Guess at what there’re thinking.
Pictures of the landscape, weather looking fine,
‘Mobilising for attack’ a point they called Lone Pine,
Picture of a crowded trench, soldiers trained to fight,
‘Snipers’ outpost action - with observer on the right’.
An Armistice to bury dead on August twenty-four,
Strangely civilized it seems, considering it’s war,
The photo shows four bodies, the simple caption works,
‘Armistice to bury dead. . . four Turks.’
I’m flicking through the pictures as I do on Anzac Day,
Picturing my mother’s dad so many miles away,
And I wonder what he thought of with his camera in his hand,
Knowing I can never know and never understand.
Like many people of my age I’ve never been to war,
But my parents and their parents knew what uniforms were for,
For God and King and Country they fought to keep us free,
And that freedom is the legacy they left for you and me.
But the pictures in the album from the soldier at the war,
Pictures from another land which show the things he saw,
With the captions in his writing, the use of words so spare,
Takes me back through all those years and makes me think I’m there.
MICHELAGO MICK
ABC Country Hour - 24 April 1998
Mike Stephens 1996
