A short history lesson
today, the first sunday of december, the four of us decided to explore the WWII tunnels. this is something that john and i had been planning on for a while. lucky for us, elliot did a bit of research and discovered that they are open to the public on the 1st sunday of the month, and that there are guided tours. seeing that the weather wasn't so fab today (a cool 23...) it seemed like a great idea.
i don't know about you, but my knowledge of WWII is limited. and by that i mean it is practically non-existant. sad, i know. but history has never been my forte (sorry marc!) what little knowledge i do have revolves around canada's involvement. ask me about other countries, and i wouldn't know a thing (sorry again marc). needless to say, the first time i saw signs for the WWII tunnels in australia, i asked john "why would they have needed tunnels here" (so sorry marc). right, well, let me inform you.
turns out, WA specifically had a rather large role in WWII, what with being a close port to japan. that and freo port is huge! they told us today that over 40 ships a day were coming in and out to refuel, drop off goods, pick up troops, etc. as well, there were over 160 submarines that used freo as a base (for all the allied troops).
the tunnels were built to aid with the heavy artillery needs to help protect the coastline and more importantly, the fremantle port. there were 4 major areas: mosman park (where we were today), scarbororough (20km up the coast), garden island and rottnest island (apparently, 2500 troops were on rotto during the war... it's only about 40km squared or something).
it was rather interesting to go into the tunnels. we toured through the magazine
as we learned today, australia actually came into a bit of trouble during the war. broome and darwin (north WA and northern territory) were attacked, and the relative closeness of pearl harbour kind of put the fright in the aussies. and something i find completely fascinating (and had actually heard of before) was the HMAS Sydney.
for those of you not in the know, the HMAS Sydney was a large ship with 640 crew. in november 1941, it was attacked just off the coast of Shark Bay (see previous blog) by a german auxiliary cruiser called the Kormoran. the HMAS sydney disappeared after the attack. they have NEVER found ANY remains of the boat nor of the 640 crew. the Kormoran also sank, but remnants of it and most of its crew made it back to land. the sydney? NOTHING! does this not seem absolutely amazing? given that winds and currents in this area of the world all blow things onto the WA coastline, it is completely absurd to think none of the ships wreckage made it to land. current thinking has narrowed down the possible location of the boat to a 100km squared radius. and apparently, as of march 2008, they will be deploying a crew to search for it (again!). this time, they are using the same company who found the titanic. i am so intrigued by this disappearance. blows my mind.
so there you have it, a short lesson on australian history
xo
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