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Day 12 - cold and windy start in Jerusalem - on the road south for 1.5hr to Beersheba (Beer Sheva to the locals).
The land got flatter and drier, big paddocks of ripening barley and wheat. And then there it was - Tel el Saba - the hill that the NZ Mounteds took at bayonet point on the morning of 31 October 1917. We climbed up to the top of the Tel and our guide Graeme read us the story of the battle - I even got it on video!! We could see the entire plain over which the Australian Light Horse charged the Ottoman defenders of Beersheba- must have been a helluva sight. Turned out that Tel el Saba was also an old pre-historic walled village site with an underground water system - all if which was archeologically exposed in the 1970s. So we took a good look around as a bonus. Then it was into Beer Sheva itself , now a city of 400,000 people. (back in WW1 it used to be a dirty little village and market centre where they sold camels) Bert would not recognise the place! Visited the Beer Sheva War Cemetery (nice) and the Anzac Memorial Centre - a largely Australian version of the various battles around the area. Lunch was good with really nice Jewish bread and cheese, followed by a visit to another Anzac Memorial high up on a hill to the east of Gaza - too close for comfort actually - not that they were firing any Scud missiles that day. We got out of there quickly and back up to Ayon Kara for the unveiling of the big silver fern NZ monument. Lots of local Jewish people there and the NZ Ambassador, down from Turkey (don’t have one in Israel). NZ list more the 50 Mounted Riflemen at the Battle of Ayon Kara back in November 1917.
We finally got out of there about 3pm and it was back to Jerusalem and a few more beers. Another big day. Puff. Puff!
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