Gallipoli is a particularly sombre place for Australians, New Zealanders and Turks

The shimmering blue Aegean laps against golden-sand beaches and at first glance you'd never believe that for nine months in 1915, this verdant peninsula was hell on earth.

Some half a million Australian, British, French, Indian, New Zealand and Turkish soldiers lost their lives here in one of the bloodiest and most pointless military campaigns of World War I. Gallipoli witnessed months of horrendous trench warfare as Allied troops tried in vain to secure the Dardanelles waterway.

Now a national park, the 35-kilometre-long Gallipoli peninsula is visited by a consistent stream of Australians, New Zealanders and Turks paying tribute to their fallen men. Covered with pines and course scrub, the peninsula still bears the scars of heavy battle; trenches remain carved into the earth, and barely-buried shrapnel lies scattered everywhere. Gallipoli is dotted with moving memorials, museums, cemeteries and monuments.

Gallipoli packs out on Anzac Day (April 25) when thousands of young Australians and New Zealands converge here for a dawn service to mark the Allied landings and commemorate the soldiers who fought and died here.