Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

[Ian Evans]

This is just to put on record a few things that I saw in the 1940s and 50s. I lived in Parkes in the Central West of NSW in those years and remember the RAAF base on the Orange Road on the eastern outskirts of the town.

A little distance past the base, on the right-hand side of the road, what I took to be parking spaces for aircraft had been excavated. There were cut-outs in the sloping ground next to the road and I suspect planes parked there could have been easily camouflaged.

The Orange Road, also known as the Great Western Highway, might also have served as a runway for aircraft in the event of the airbase being bombed.

A strong memory from a visit to Sydney in the 1940s is of large crates stored under the northern approaches to the Harbour Bridge, with soldiers working among them. The storage place was the last concrete arch of the Bridge at Kirribilli. Fitzroy Street passes through that arch. My aunt lived in a 1930s flat just across the street from the Bridge, on the corner of Broughton and Fitzroy Streets. The arch would have been a safe place to store military equipment.

And I have a vague memory of walking with one or both of my parents along a coastal path that might have been somewhere south of Bondi. The sight that stuck in my memory was the barbed wire strung along by the ocean side of the pathway. Japanese submarines had attacked Sydney in 1942 and fear of invasion was very real at that time.

-----------------------------
Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Hello Ian.

 

You lived in Parkes - do you know about MINING?

And about Peak Hill and Tomingley?

I've been compiling on the great mystery of WWII at the old main Tomingley gold mine (McPhail / Myall Plains).

Now I think MOST stories about gun and you-name-it are fables .... except this one ... which after years of gathering info ... I much suspect is true.

Now a whisper so far of Department of Defence confirmation yet my informants have included boys who got down and saw stuff .. and one got a light machine gun and restored it in his back yard; and a mines inspector who had Commonwealth police come to him to accompany them to the mine to investigate.    The latter (who strangely enough didn't much seem to know exactly where to go) went with Mines Inspector .. and a squad of soldiers and a sergeant (to do any digging to get in .. they thought).   This party fronted up at the one-man Police Station in Tomingley.   It turned out to be a case of poor intergovernmental (State/Commonwealth) relations.  The Policeman told them to piss off and go find it themselves.   They did, and the soldiers were set digging at where was judged to have been the main site one.

They dug and they dug .. till they hit concrete.   Then the sergeant sent in to town for a case of beer.

I don't think they did any more digging after that.

This is a long long story (and still ongoing)  .. anyone interested in details just contact me.

Re under the "northern approaches to the Harbour Bridge" this is also where the DMR (RTA/RMS) testing labs once where .. and I am looking for "where are they now".

Re "Japanese submarines" --- I have written the story of the "Putney submarine"  (cut up at Settlers Park, Putney) which boys who saw it (at least two of whom still live nearby - but no longer boys) saw and thought was a Japanese submarine.   But turns out to have been a Dutch submarine which fled the invading Japanese.   It was called the KXVII -- but after it reached Aus it was donated to the Aus Navy and they re-named it the K12.   Again, anyone interested, contact me for details.

Cheers,

 

Dr John Byrnes

 

~~~~~~

This is just to put on record a few things that I saw in the 1940s and 50s. I lived in Parkes in the Central West of NSW in those years and remember the RAAF base on the Orange Road on the eastern outskirts of the town.

A little distance past the base, on the right-hand side of the road, what I took to be parking spaces for aircraft had been excavated. There were cut-outs in the sloping ground next to the road and I suspect planes parked there could have been easily camouflaged.

The Orange Road, also known as the Great Western Highway, might also have served as a runway for aircraft in the event of the airbase being bombed.

A strong memory from a visit to Sydney in the 1940s is of large crates stored under the northern approaches to the Harbour Bridge, with soldiers working among them. The storage place was the last concrete arch of the Bridge at Kirribilli. Fitzroy Street passes through that arch. My aunt lived in a 1930s flat just across the street from the Bridge, on the corner of Broughton and Fitzroy Streets. The arch would have been a safe place to store military equipment.

And I have a vague memory of walking with one or both of my parents along a coastal path that might have been somewhere south of Bondi. The sight that stuck in my memory was the barbed wire strung along by the ocean side of the pathway. Japanese submarines had attacked Sydney in 1942 and fear of invasion was very real at that time.

-----------------------------

Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

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[Ian Evans]

John,

I know nothing about mining in the places you mention. There were and probably still are quite a number of old shafts in Parkes itself. There was one under the Edwardian cottage in Bogan Street in which we lived, another under the male changing rooms at the swimming pool (which backed onto Bogan Street) and another further down Bogan Street into which I dropped stones and waited (quite a long time) for the splash.
The mining tradition was still alive when I was there. One of our neighbours, Dick Shaw, whose house was two doors from No. 15 Bogan Street where we later lived, had a working mine. He came up to me at our side fence holding a small white paper bag. "Here," he said, "hold this." I did and was amazed at the weight of that paper bag. He showed me the content: a pyramid of gold.

Ian

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Ian,

A "pyramid" of gold seems unusual.   Had he melted it or anything?

I wonder if Dick is still at it?

Best Regards, John

 

 

 

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Re: {OzArch} Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

[Ian Evans]

John,

Dick's time as a goldminer would be well past. The pyramid wasn't a nugget. He had clearly made it. He took me out to his mine once. It was somewhere between Parkes and Forbes, off the highway on the left-hand side. I recall opening gates....my job and the reason I was invited, I suspect.
At the mine, I remember a very deep excavation into which trucks could gain access on an extremely steep road. And there was at least one very large chemical vat open to the sky........

Ian

-----------------------------
Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

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[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Hello,

Thanks and if not melted yet  " He had clearly made it" .... did he bash smaller bits together.

I'm investigating a "priceless" (i.e. unique) historical artefact of this nature = the "Hargraves Nugget".

It is what Mr.  Hargraves started the great Gold Rush (to Ophir) with .. by displaying it at a talk he gave in Bathurst.

It now belongs to Sydney Uni.

I went there a while back to ask to see and photograph it ...   but ..

OOOPS .. they cannot find it.

They say it should be 'somewhere'.

But the weeks are ticking by and nobody has been able to find it yet.

I have this bugbear about "moveable heritage" .. it should all be numbered and carefully kept track of.

And mmmmm, one very large chemical vat somewhere between Forbes and Parkes and on the left hand side of the road.

I will ask my wife ...as not only she the best at everything relating to vats and cooking .. but also she was the last of us to fly into Parkes.

When around Forbes she laid eyes on an incredibly handsome cyclon.    Owners often  tend to keep such things quite, as you might imagine .... .. don't want to Gov. to know they have them.

 

Cheers, John

 

~~

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Re: {OzArch} Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

John,

Dick's time as a goldminer would be well past. The pyramid wasn't a nugget. He had clearly made it. He took me out to his mine once. It was somewhere between Parkes and Forbes, off the highway on the left-hand side. I recall opening gates....my job and the reason I was invited, I suspect.
At the mine, I remember a very deep excavation into which trucks could gain access on an extremely steep road. And there was at least one very large chemical vat open to the sky........

Ian

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[Ian Evans]

John,

The gold pyramid I referred to had clearly been made from molten gold poured into a mould. The vat at Dick Shaw's gold mine, and the mine itself, were probably nowhere near the Parkes-Forbes road. I wonder if it might still be there and visible on Google Earth.

Best etc,

Ian Evans

-----------------------------
Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

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[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Hi Ian,

 

Sounds to me like gold recovered by re-cyaniding a slimes heap.

I could theoretically find that gold production (if declared to Government) in Mines Department records.

Cheers, John

 

~~~ 

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[Jeannette Hope]

Hi Ian and John

 

This reminded me of my father’s memories of his service in PNG during the war.  J = Jeannette,  D = Doug Partridge.

 

J.            One of my memories is the gold dust you brought back from Wau. Did you actually collect it yourself?

 

D.           Yes, I collected it myself. The advance boys who went up there managed to get a lot of gold from Wau. They melted it down and made it into spanners and painted it with silver paint so it wouldn’t be detected as gold. They put it in their tool kit to smuggle it home. I saw it. Of course they had plenty of time to do it, fixing up the camp for us to come into it. We were on a coffee plantation.

 

J.            So your own bit of gold - you actually went out and panned for it in the creek or what?

 

D.           Ahh - no it was an open cut, a big open cut, it wasn’t in a creek.  When everybody walked out, it was just left and why the early boys got so much is it was still in the sluice boxes and they just dug it out of the sluice boxes. Everybody just walked out --- because of the war. The Japanese were coming, see. There was a quite a big battle there at Wau and they were evacuated and they just dropped tools and left everything as it was. The township was absolutely flattened with the exception of the safe in the bank. The safe just stood in the middle of the little village a stark indicator of what used to be there --- just a bank vault.

 

I assume they made moulds from spanners in which to pour the gold.   Alas, I don’t know what happened to the gold dust (it was a small amount in a tiny glass jar).  When I interviewed my father in 1995, he couldn’t remember either!  He was in the 9^th Ambulance, and just avoided the Centaur sinking.  His unit was waiting in Townsville to board the hospital ship for New Guinea when it was torpedoed off Moreton Island.   

 

Jeannette

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Virus-free. www.avg.com

 

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Jeanette,

I still collect gold stories (and am onto the supposed "grave of the Gold Finder" ... the real first gold finder in Aus, the shepherd near Wellington,  not Mr Hargraves).

Also I know I have a post I haven't yet replied to you on, and do apologise .. some computer problems.   Think it was on mounds or something.

The geologists have still got "rocks in their heads" on these "BIRD" mounds.   There's also a new theory or two floating around Sydney on the "Invasion" of the Brush Turkey in our suburbs.   I discount that it is DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE but a second theory does hold water.

Best Regards, John

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Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:20:33 +1100

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RE: {OzArch} Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Jeanette,

I still collect gold stories (and am onto the supposed "grave of the Gold Finder" ... the real first gold finder in Aus, the shepherd near Wellington,  not Mr Hargraves).

Also I know I have a post I haven't yet replied to you on, and do apologise .. some computer problems.   Think it was on mounds or something.

The geologists have still got "rocks in their heads" on these "BIRD" mounds.   There's also a new theory or two floating around Sydney on the "Invasion" of the Brush Turkey in our suburbs.   I discount that it is DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE but a second theory does hold water.

Best Regards, John

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RE: {OzArch} Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Jeanette,

I still collect gold stories (and am onto the supposed "grave of the Gold Finder" ... the real first gold finder in Aus, the shepherd near Wellington,  not Mr Hargraves).

Also I know I have a post I haven't yet replied to you on, and do apologise .. some computer problems.   Think it was on mounds or something.

The geologists have still got "rocks in their heads" on these "BIRD" mounds.   There's also a new theory or two floating around Sydney on the "Invasion" of the Brush Turkey in our suburbs.   I discount that it is DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE but a second theory does hold water.

Best Regards, John

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RE: {OzArch} Relics and memories of WW11 in the landscape

[Ian Evans]

John,

The technique you describe sounds right to me. It would be excellent if you could find in it the Mines Dept records....... that should give the location and I'd love to visit it again.

Best,

Ian

-----------------------------
Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

--

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Ian,

 

To john...@ozemail.com.au please send as much locational narrative some time as you can relate; and maybe something like a Google earth image with a big circle marked that it would be within -- then I'll determine the Parish name therein and try them all (original lease records are by Parish name).

Should be able to find it because small operator still pouring appreciable gold have now become very rare ... unlike in the 1850s-etc. when the hills were covered by small gold producers.

Cheers, John

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[Ian Evans]

Parish? The mine was out in the mulga somewhere between Parkes and Forbes to the east of the road between them. I'll have a shot at finding it on Google Earth if there's still anything there.

Ian

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Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

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Phone 0455 173 456

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[Ian Evans]

John,

I've had a look on Google Earth. There's not much detail in the maps I saw. I remember we turned off the Newell Highway and at some stage went through a gate or gates and drove further before we cam to the mine.

Bear in mind that this was some 60+ years ago and details have been lost.......

Ian

-----------------------------
Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

Mullumbimby NSW 2482

Phone 0455 173 456

[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Ian,

 

I can search east of the highway ... if you can say approximately how far it was from either of those places.

Cheers, John

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[Ian Evans]

John,

I would absolutely be guessing. I was just a kid at the time and I'm a long way from being a kid now! It would be closer to Parkes than Forbes. They are about 20 miles apart, so let's say 5 – 8 miles out of Parkes. 

Ian

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Ian Evans, OAM, PhD
Tasmanian Magic Project (Visit us on Facebook)

PO Box 591

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[john...@ozemail.com.au]

 

Thanks Evan,

I'll begin search then in 10 km diameter half circle north from Parkes.   My wife is also a geologist and has been there, plus another geo I used to work with (John Chapman) has special interest in the area and I think did a study on hydrothermal/metasomatic alteration the Peak Hill gold mine(?).    BIG company gold mining still continues at Tomingley as you may have heard.   Your friend might have been the last of the small-timers in the district ??   A prospector there who I had been particularly interested in the activities of was a Mr. John McCarron (worked under the name of 'Metallic Resources' from memory) but he is now deceased.  Virtually ALL of the prospectors and small syndicate gold men I knew (I worked for Mines Department) are now deceased  .. and last to go was one living at Ophir -- the first big splash of the 1850s goldrush.   I only recently once again called in at Orange Council to again urge them to try and record oral history from this man.   Although I did not know it at the time he had possibly recently passed away just before I was urging them to go visit him.   The same man also worked earlier on as a guide at Jenolan Caves and would have have lot and lots of memories from there too.

Best Regards,

 

John

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