Captured in colour: rare photographs from the First World War - The Gallipoli mission

• Introduction
• Colour photography
• Australian official photographers
• The French autochromists

Between January and March 1919, Wilkins accompanied Bean and others on an historical mission to Gallipoli, to collect evidence of the 1915 campaign. Knowing of his previous expeditions and his wartime service, Bean described this as “probably the most unadventurous expedition of his (Wilkins’) life”.

Wilkins was moved by what he saw on Gallipoli, describing the tattered uniforms and bones of men around Quinn’s, Courtney’s and Steele’s posts as “much the most impressive battlefield I’ve seen”. He set up a darkroom in an abandoned water tank and worked long into the night developing his photographs.

Bean described Wilkins as a “born leader” and credited him in large measure with the mission’s success:

I used to note with amusement that, as we strode and climbed about the hills, the rest of the party unconsciously followed Wilkins’ lead. If he used a certain path, climbed a cliff in a particular way, jumped a trench or even went round the left or right of a bush, the rest of us usually did the same.

The mission over, in April 1919 Wilkins returned to London, observing with some prescience that Gallipoli would increasingly become a calling point for travellers.

The Nek, scene of the slaughter of the 8th and 10th Light Horse Brigades in August 1915, was covered in skeletal remains when Bean returned in 1919.

Anzac Cove, the site of the famous landing by Australians and New Zealanders on 25 April 1915, was already a place of legend when Bean’s mission returned in 1919.

Early Australian attempts to capture the strongly-held promontory at Gaba Tepe ended in failure, and it remained the main observation post for Turkish artillery throughout the Gallipoli campaign.