Ted Beard has had his name picked out of two ballots in his life, both of which ended with him travelling a long way from Australia. The latest has made him quite a deal happier than the first.
Back in 1968, Mr Beard's name came up in the lottery that conscripted young men into national service. He was opposed to the Vietnam War, but he figured conscription would be a lot more interesting if he agreed to serve his "nasho" in Vietnam. He went off on a 12-month tour with the 2nd Advanced Ordnance Depot in Vung Tau.
All these years later, his name was chosen from around 50,000 in the ballot for the right to attend the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Mr Beard, his wife Dympna - who entered his name in the Gallipoli ballot - his good mate Paul Bennett and Mr Bennett's partner Angela Stainwall are part of a tide of Australians surging in to Istanbul in preparation for the journey to Gallipoli for the centenary commemorations on Saturday.
It's the first time any of them have been to Turkey - the first time Mr Bennett has been out of Australia - and they were quite overcome by the sight of the Blue Mosque floodlit a couple of hundred metres from their hotel when they arrived on Saturday evening.
But despite their excitement about going to Gallipoli, both Mr Beard and Mr Bennett are a little perturbed they won't be with all their other mates at the Anzac Day service in Monbulk, a hills village in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges. Neither can quite remember when they weren't there for the Anzac Day dawn and the traditional "gunfire breakfast".
Around 1300 people are expected at the service in Monbulk, which has a population of about 3500.
Mr Beard is a past-president of the Monbulk RSL. Mr Bennett has been secretary-treasurer for a couple of decades.
They've come up with a solution. Mr Beard will phone the Monbulk RSL and give a live description of events at the Gallipoli services.
The phone link will have to be put on hold for part of the Anzac morning ceremony. The little party has been chosen to lay a wreath at the commemorative site at North Beach near Anzac Cove.
The wreath has been knitted and embroided with poppies by Mr Bennett's sisters Lynn and Raelene and other women from the Monbulk RSL.
"It'll be a big moment," Mr Beard said. "People might worry about Anzac Day being over-commercialised, but to me it's simply what Australians do - remembering the people who served."
The friends know the Gallipoli Peninsula will be crowded on Anzac Day, but they plan to return a few days later, when it's quiet, and visit lonely cemeteries where those who served and died lie beneath the ground.
And then the well-named Mr Beard and his wife and friends went off to dinner in a restaurant built within part of Istanbul's ancient Byzantium Palace, complete with its own thousand-year-old deep stone well, and had a meal cooked in clay pots that were broken apart in great flaming ceremony in front of them. A table of travellers from Perth clapped along. It's like that in Turkey in April.
