With handshakes that would make a wrestler flinch, true to the family's ancient motto of "Grip Fast," Mr Leslie's daughters comprise a rare group of surviving children of Anzac soldiers.

Now aged 79 to 90, the sisters won three of the 7600 places allocated to Australians in a ballot to attend the dawn service at Gallipoli in Turkey on Anzac Day this year. It will also include as many as 10 surviving widows of World War I veterans, who will travel as guests of the Australian government. The oldest person is 99, while the youngest is 16. Fewer than 100 people over 75 years of age are attending, making the Leslie siblings highly unusual.

Middle sister, Diana Moore, 85 of Northbridge, expects it will be emotional to see the place where her 19- year-old dad disembarked – and where 8100 soldiers lost their life in action or from wounds or disease.

Even watching the TV series Gallipoli was too much.

"All I could see was 19-year-old dad climbing up the cliffs. I couldn't watch any more," said Mrs Moore.

Lieutenant Geoffrey Leslie was a young man who appeared to defy the odds. He lasted at Gallipoli for eight months, taking up smoking to disguise the smell of the corpses in the trenches at Lone Pine. His oldest daughter Joan remembers him saying how he, along with other troops, muffled their feet so the Turks wouldn't hear them when they were evacuated in late December 1915.

Mr Leslie later fought in the trenches of the Somme during some of the worst fighting in France, where he lost an eye but kept his life. Fitted with a new glass eye, the first of many, he went on to fly as an adjutant in the Australian Flying Corps and play golf later in life, relying on a caddy to help him judge the distance. He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry by King George V at Buckingham Palace. In his retirement, his daughters said he sailed a yacht up the Barrier Reef in the dark, and rowed up and down the Nerang River in his 80s before dying aged 93.

Mr Leslie's youngest daughter, Denise Robertson, 79, said the trip to Gallipoli was a "tribute to our father.'" Her sister, Joan Morgans now 90, said "he'd be chuffed to think that we are making the effort," she said. Mr Leslie had four children, including a son Bruce who is not going to Gallipoli.

The three daughters keep fit by swimming, still competing in masters swimming events and doing laps at the Carlile pool in Killarney Heights. "Dad was so important to us, he was way up there .. ," said Mrs Moore, gesturing to the skies, before she started doing her laps. " We loved him, we admired him, and we just want to do justice to him."

Like most children though, the Leslie girls were blind to some of their father's flaws. Mrs Moore said she remembers realising her dad had a glass eye when a neighbour said her father had lost a leg and "yours lost an eye." "Indeed, he did not," she replied, before realising the neighbour was right.