Tunnels, Bombs and Pearls

Today we took time to do some housekeeping tasks such as laundry, washing the car and resizing some photos and upload them to Webshots. After this we went into Darwin city and down to the wharf area. We decided to have a look at the underground Oil Storage Tunnels built during World War II. Eight tunnels were commissioned in 1943 after Japanese bomb attacks almost destroyed the eleven oil storage tanks that had been built when the naval ships changed over from coal to oil in 1924. A number of engineering problems including flooding with water meant that only five of them had been completed by the end of the war. They were never used for bulk oil storage but some jet fuel was stored in tunnels 5 and 6 in the 1950s. Inside there are a number of display boards along the tunnel’s length with photos from the war years showing the destruction by air attack suffered by Darwin on the 19th February 1942. 292 people including some civilians lost their lives and ships were sunk in the harbour. The photos are amazing and eye-opening. I certainly didn’t realize how seriously under threat our country was and how many attacks the Japanese waged upon Darwin. In fact, on the way here yesterday we called into Hughes Airfield along the Stuart Highway and now all that is left is basically a dirt road in the scrub with an information board but it was also bombed despite attempts by our forces to conceal its existence from the enemy. Along the wharf there is more information about the devastation caused by Japanese air attacks and the number of lives, ships and aircraft lost during those attacks. It’s hard to imagine the fear people must have felt knowing our coastline was under threat and all the defences that were deemed necessary to protect Australia from these threats. It is an amazing piece of Australian history that can really be brought to life here in Darwin where it all happened. The photos are of the entrance tunnel (with pipes down it) and tunnel 6 which is 7.8 m long, 4.5 m wide and 5 m high and has a capacity of 1.755 million litres.
Following our look at the oils storage tunnels we went to the Paspaley Pearls exhibition. It was very interesting to see the video of how cultured pearl farming has developed and Paspaley’s operation is amazing with staff living on ships out at sea where they seed the shells and look after the farms, cleaning the oyster shells and checking on them regularly, harvesting, sorting etc all on board the ships then they have a supply ship to take supplies to them also. Photography was forbidden but there was just a display of early diving helmets, model ships etc as well as some pearls and pearl shells. The video gave us the most insight to the pearling industry.
After this we went to the wharf and took some photos and had afternoon tea. There were quite a lot of people there sitting at the tables out from the various cafes, mainly seafood but one called Kim’s On the Wharf which also had Asian food.

Following this we went back to our holiday unit and got ready to go to Chris & Russ’s place for a lovely home-cooked roast dinner. It was very nice too! We got to meet her big boys, John and Paul too since they came home for roast dinner and to see their mum on her birthday. Chris showed me some of her scrap books of her trip to the UK; she is a patient and dedicated scrapper. Mine won’t be going into scrapbooks; I’ll have to be content with digital scrapbooks and my BLOG.

Happy Birthday again Chris & thanks for the yummy dinner and hospitality!