Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

A wartime secret 'revealed'

Tomorrow is Anzac Day, the sacred event when tribute is paid to the dead of some of Australia's wars. I say some, because several of the military actions involving the sons of this country in the 19th century pre-federation era tend to be overlooked. For example those against the natives of Sudan, South Africa, New Zealand and China.

This evening young people from organisations such as Scouts and Cadets will maintain an all night vigil at the Fremantle and Perth War Memorials. Then tomorrow morning, irrespective of the weather, there will be hundreds of people gathered in the dark for the dawn service at both places.

The 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts has long provided members to participate in both the vigils and the daybreak service at Fremantle. Most of our children have participated as Sea Scouts over the years, and tomorrow it will be the turn of out youngest son.

The actual service doesn't last long, maybe ten minutes. Then everyone goes somewhere else for breakfast. The Sea Scouts will return to their riverside lair at East Fremantle for bacon and sausages.

The Fremantle War Memorial has a splendid view over the port. We can just see the sandstone edifice from the back verandah of our house. I'm a little sorry that green laser pointers have just been outlawed in this country because I've long had a hankering to buy one and see if I could illuminate it from here. Too late now. I'd be thrown in prison. Below is a picture I took of the memorial in 2004. Click on it for a larger version.

What most Fremantle visitors don't see, and probably nor do a lot of Fremantle residents for that matter, is what lies behind the south eastern side of the War Memorial hill. The facility is well hidden because it was supposed to be. I speak of four very large oil tanks which bunkered countless ships at the port in times of peace and war.

Amongst the ships would have been HMAS Sydney II, the recently located light-cruiser which will be commemorated at many Anzac ceremonies around Australia tomorrow. The vessel had been home-ported at Fremantle when it and its entire 645 crew were terminated in a battle with a German warship off the WA coast in November 1941.

The four tanks are located below the eastern crest of the ridge and are invisible from the ocean. All are now decommissioned, and I suppose it won't be too long before they are cut up for scrap and sent to the smelters of China. The area they occupied is to be used for housing. The Fremantle War Memorial is on the ridge, behind the tank on the right. Beyond that is the port.

Above the tanks, along the ridge itself, are some very large underground, concrete-lined water cisterns. They're also invisible, but from all directions. Engineering marvels for their time in a way, I reckon they could have filled a couple of Olympic sized pools. Now the cisterns have been drained. Their roofs, once supported by the remnant brick piers are gone. Modern graffiti 'artists' have arrived and made their cultish marks.

Beneath the tanks are very large concrete lined catchments built to accommodate the ultimate disaster - an oil spill. When I was looking at the abandoned facility a couple of weeks ago I found a convenient hole in the fence which seemed to be saying, "Come in and make a photographic record." So I did. There's possibly a subterranean plume of contamination beneath the tanks, so don't drink the groundwater.

I created a 360 degree panorama which I think came out pretty well. On my computer screen I can view these 360 degree panoramas continuously in either direction, but on the Panoramio site they have to be loaded as a strip. Nonetheless, I think it's a pretty interesting sort of historical document. As with all my panorama experiments, just keep clicking to enlarge them to the max, then scroll about.

There's also a single shot, high definition version of the four tanks image for Panoramio here.

Similarly, there's a high definition one of the water cisterns here.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!