To date, the Australian Bunker & Military Museum has confirmed the existence of three sites and is steadily working its way down a list of 150 or more sites in Eastern Australia alone. Enough circumstantial evidence of the existence of many of these other major sites has come from the form of geological surveys and aerial imagery interpretation that they need only be confirmed by one or more official records for the case to become open and shut.
At time of writing (July, 2004) the Australian Bunker & Military Museum has three high-value confirmed sites. These sites have been confirmed through official Australian government records. To protect the integrity of these sites and our own intellectual property, they will not be referred to by location or wartime unit name, but rather by code names. Full disclosure of these locations can only be made to our investment partners and relevant government authorities. It is planned to open and exploit these sites in the order that they are given below for a variety of economic and operational reasons.
We will now look at these three confirmed sites.
SITE 1: The Bomb Dump
STATUS: Confirmed By Official Sources
The site is an enlarged mine shaft system converted into storage tunnels. This site was serviced by a rail system to transport ammunition throughout the facility and our former defense force sources inform us that it is a very large storage area. These same sources visited the site in the late 1980s and reported that it contained possibly hundreds of US manufactured aircraft with the exceedingly rare and valuable B17 Flying Fortress 4 engine bomber among the aircraft types noted during their survey. Vehicles and other military equipment were also noted by the military survey team.
Official military activity ceased at the site in 1948 and the location is now private property. Negotiations with the landowners have been initiated and are progressing well.
The photograph below will give an idea of the expected layout of this site.
The existence of this site has been confirmed by examining official records and the exact location has been determined from satellite imagery and topographical mapping. Additionally, a field reconnaissance by Australian Bunker & Military Museum personnel has located the most likely entry point.
Below, you will see various excerpts from official records which were used to confirm the site. This evidence is groundbreaking as it was the first large-scale sealed Second World War bunker complex located since the early 1970s.
The last was the famous, but now defunct Bankstown Operations bunker in Sydney’s western suburbs.
1. Partial Plan of the tunnel and ventilation system:
2. Excerpt from the file which confirmed the existence of a tunnel system at this site, THIS IS ONE OF 70 PAGES, OF BUNKER.
3. Plan of the camp area. Imagery interpretation of wartime aerial imagery of the site dated after this plan was made in 1944, shows no buildings or streets. This has led us to the conclusion that this is an overhead plan of the actual tunnel system itself with surface features such as rocky slopes and walking tracks over lays for operational security reasons. The blacked out areas are where identifying details have been removed by Australian Bunker & Military Museum personnel.
