Screentime was aware that the ABC and other networks were looking for Anzac-related projects to coincide with the centenary of World War I, so they began looking for projects which would ‘offer points of difference from what we suspected would be a lot of war stories of men in trenches.’
Screenwriter and producer Felicity Packard read The Other Anzacs by Peter Rees and ‘thought it would make a wonderful drama series, with the added advantage that it’s based on real people and real events, so we weren’t making stuff up. It allowed us to tell not only the story of Gallipoli, but also the war on the Western Front and Australia’s experience of that – but from quite an unexpected point of view, through the eyes of women who served just behind the lines, but yet contributed and experienced war but not in the typical way, Felicity said.
