I have grown up with the legend of my Grandfather, Alynn Skelton Henry Emmett and his involvement in the First World War and a set of photos that he took on a small box camera that he had in his kit bag.

He was in the 26th Battalion and was 23 when he enlisted from Stanley, Tasmania. The photos he took on his war journey include images of the troopships leaving Sydney, life on deck, Egypt, Gallipoli and officer training in Cambridge.

He was in the second wave at Gallipoli and then served in France on the Western Front and attended officer training in Cambridge England.

He returned to Tasmania, married, had a family and worked as a bank manager in Ulverstone.

I was the apple of his eye and he was my Grandad, my only living grandparent. We were very close and I grew up thinking that all old men bandaged their legs, to realise later that these were the results of a war some 60 years past where standing in the trenches had caused ulcers on his legs that never healed.

He became increasingly senile and died when I was 16. He was 92.

In 2009, I visited Turkey and took a tour of the Gallipoli Peninsula armed with some of his photos.

I found the experience overwhelming: to sit on the beach at ANZAC Cove, to stare at those cliffs that met them, Lone Pine, the trenches at Walker’s Ridge where he was based.

To traverse the same land and to take in the views that he had experienced under such different circumstances moved me to write and produce a photo essay that has now taken the form of the digital story attached.