A quick drive on the motorways brought us around lunch to Villers- Bretonneux where we visited the museum which is attached to the Victorian School. A sign explained it was built with donations from Victorian school children after WW1. The school hall is made of Australian timbers and had carvings of Australian animals on timber columns around the walls. The Australian Memorial was just outside the town on a hill which gave a good view of all of the surrounding countryside of rolling hills of wheat. It reminded me a little of the Lochyer Valley. The very top of the memorial has a lookout which had chunks taken out of it from fighting during WW11. The tower gave an even wider view to the many small villages dotted around this area. We saw Le Hamel, another village famous in Australian wartime history, and took the five minute drive to the Australian Memorial to that battle. The memorial is new just having been opened by Quentin Bryce. We had the memorial to ourselves and it was peaceful looking over such lovely rolling farmland and it was difficult to.imagine it any other way. Small red poppies were sprouting where the wheat had just been harvested. We thought we might drive to Fromelles tomorrow.
“The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson