During the Gallipoli campaign at Anzac many battlefield cemeteries were constructed. With war’s end in 1918 and the defeat of Turkey, British units were despatched to the Gallipoli peninsula where they began the task of locating cemeteries, marking graves and burying the unburied dead. This work was carried out initially by British Graves Registration personnel and in the Anzac sector it was overseen by an Australian Gallipoli veteran, Lieutenant Cyril Hughes, a Tasmanian.

In November 1919 Hughes was appointed Director of Works in control of the Imperial War Graves Commission’s (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission) cemetery and memorial construction program on Gallipoli. Under him was a mixed labour force of Turks, Greeks and White Russians, none of whom spoke English. Hughes, in his own words, communicated with them in ‘a mixture of Arabic, Turkish, and Greek’. He found that ‘the fact that I’m an Australian is better still’. Hughes was also impressed by their capacity for work and remarked ‘Thank goodness all my fellows can do about fifteen things’.

For the building work Hughes developed a Turkish quarry on Gallipoli at Ulgardere. According to one authority, the stone there was of ‘that same class as that of which the Homeric walls of Troy were built’. Some of this stone was brought in by lorry but the rest was transported by sea to North Beach where an aerial ropeway was constructed to take it up on to the ridge and down to Lone Pine. As construction work proceeded, the peninsula received its first visitors, although the intention was to keep them firmly away until all work was finished. In April 1920 Hughes wrote of someone who may have been the first Anzac pilgrim.