The Bloody Ridge

Simon Cameron graduated as a medical practitioner in 1981 from Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia with minors in history. Training in history stimulated a life of enquiry, culminating in a social history of Adelaide’s monuments which was published in 1997. He discovered Australia’s Great War history at Anzac Cove in the 1980s where the lonely, bone strewn gullies inspired pilgrimages to other battlefields. Trying to understand why our young nation was stepping onto the stage of ancient battles-capes was a journey enlivened by the stories of endurance, loss and despair in the literature and archives of that generation. There is no wisdom in war, but understanding what war means is the only wise thing to do, and telling the soldiers’ stories is the only way to do it.