In an endeavor to preserve the war time history of Australia. The Australian Bunker & Military Museum recently engaged the services of a leading geologist in an attempt to clearly pin point the location of bunkers & tunnels, which have been sealed off and covered over in the years after WW2.
This work was carried out in North Queensland to begin with and along with the Geo surveys, we have also put countless hours of external research of each area of interest. The areas were presented to us over the years from various sources which include ex service men who at one time or another were posted in North Queensland.
Over the years we have met with resistance over the existence of these tunnels and bunkers by D.O.D. and the various councils in which we have sought to explore.
The largest area of interest is Townsville, as Townsville was at one time, the largest U.S. military base outside the Untied States. It was Townsville that served as the staging area for the allies push north towards Japan and it has been Townsville where we have met the stiffest resistance from council as specially.
Since 1992, The Australian Bunker & Military Museum (and it’s predecessors NQRS & ABP) have presented photo and affidavit evidence to suggest the existence of such structures. Only to be stonewalled & ridiculed by council, who never actually looked at the evidence presented.
Unfortunately, over the course of time. The service men who had written the statutory declarations confirming the existence of the tunnels & bunkers have since passed and their first hand accounts have now been lost.
Whilst some of the photo evidence has previously not been the most conclusive due to the quality of the images. We have recently found some better quality photos.
In the photo’s below we been able to overlay the council sub division which shows the streets and housing lots.
Above: Top left corner, middle of the photo and towards the bottom right are clearly holes in the ground.
Below: The same photo with the development map overlayed and the entrances circled
Above: What the area looks like today
Below: The blow up image in the middle shows an entry at Garbutt air base. This can be seen in both left and right images. Just above the insert on the left image and just below the insert in the right image.
Above: A statement from an expert we have used in the past regarding Mt Louisa
What the ABMM can offer Townsville, is the establishment of a permanent museum within the region. Many of our supporters in the area want to see any & all of this history to remain in the Region. Far to often they have spoken of relics and artifacts being removed from the area to wind up in Canberra at the War memorial or sitting in storage facilities.
We would like to change that.
The establishment of a war museum in Townsville could have a profound effect on the local economy as well as directly providing much needed employment for people in the local area.
The Australian War Memorial has more than 1 million visitors per year. Of those, it is conservatively estimated that 90% do not live in the region. If the Australian Bunker & Military Museum were to attract 10% of the visitors as the war memorial. It would translate into 90,000 new visitors to the region each year. A massive boost in anyone’s language.
Add to this, the museums ability to fund further research and exploration, (which up until now has been done on a purely volunteer basis or not done at all because it has been financially prohibitive) creating further employment oppurtunites.
We need your help!
Australian Bunker & Military Museum is a non-profit organization