Recent publicity in the Lithgow Mercury and Illawarra Mercury about the wartime clandestine chemical warfare operations at Marrangaroo, Clarence and Glenbrook attracted a lot of interest and it seems we weren’t alone in the latest revelations.
Reader Pat Cox has drawn our attention to the May issue of the Australian Railway History magazine that devoted a seven page article to the storage of nasty weaponry in these disused railway tunnels.
The magazine article was written by Geoff Plunkett and quoted from his book Chemical Warfare in Australia available through the Australian Railway Historical Society bookshop.
It enlarges on our involvement in the stockpiling of technically illegal chemical weapons but points out that they were meant only for retaliatory action after intelligence reports that the Japanese forces had such weapons in their armory and had already used them in their march towards Australia.
Said the author: “In a top secret operation the RAAF imported mustard gas and the lethal choking agent phosgene.
“Around a million chemical weapons were imported between 1942 and the war’s end and many of them passed through the disused railway tunnels around Lithgow and Glenbrook.
He continued: ‘… the Japanese possessed a well developed chemical warfare organisational structure as well as ample chemical weapons and defensive equipment … and samples of their weapons were captured in Papua New Guinea.”
Consequently the Australian authorities covertly imported its ‘insurance’ stocks and decided on storage in disused railway tunnels adjacent to the Marrangaroo military munitions depot, at Clarence, Glenbrook and also at Picton.
The Clarence tunnel was once part of the original Zig Zag and these days is again in use on the Zig Zag tourist railway.
It had been used as a staging depot since February 1944 for a newly established chemical weapons facility in Queensland.
The Marrangaroo tunnel was used for growing mushrooms for some years after the war and is currently abandoned. The military depot is still used as a training facility by all three branches of the armed forces.
Glenbrook tunnel is again being used for mushroom farming.
The author said that after the war the chemical weapons were either dumped at sea or burnt in what he described as ‘a huge conflagration in the Newnes State Forest’.
We can be sure that we still have not heard the end of our role in the secret war.
(From magazine provided by Pat Cox).