During World War 2, the city of Newcastle received a disproportionate amount of protection compared to the rest of Australia.
These are the words that feature in the first six seconds of Glenn Dormand’s latest Stories of our Town addition – ‘Fortress Newcastle – Life Under Threat’.
The talented filmmaker then transports viewers on an historic journey through the eyes of local historians, family regales and eye-witness accounts, to the reasons why the former steel city featured so prominently in the second world war.
Each of the interviewed guests that feature on the 54-minute documentary offer an intelligent piece to a puzzle some Novocastrians may never have heard of.
“Everything you needed to run a war in Australia was centred here in Newcastle,” local historian Bob Cook says in the film’s opening minutes.
“This was a military establishment on a major scale.”
A deep water port, coal supplies, a large dockyard for repairing damaged ships, an airforce base and the steelworks, were all drawcards for the city at the time.
Industries producing munitions, helmets, rifles, bullet casings, bullet-proof steel, and factories making uniforms, and dried food among other things.
Dr John Risby OAM, retired general manager of BHP, recalls the importance of Newcastle Steelworks at the time.
“At the start of the war in 1939 [it] was the biggest steel plant in the British empire,” he said.
BHP Newcastle did in fact produce 9,957,000 tonnes of iron and steel for the war effort.
For Newcastle resident Geoff Hyde, who was a child at the time, witnessing the increased military installations in his hometown was terrifying.
“It was frightening, it really, truly was,” he said. “Even as a kid all this stuff they were putting in to protect us, the wire fences, the tank traps and all the guns firing in practice, it was frightening.”
The film’s title derives from the military title given to the protection of the industries of Australia in Newcastle.
“Only two places in the whole of Australia were protected to any extent in the Second World War – Sydney, of course, and here in Newcastle,” Bob Cook said.
The city’s population at the time was less than 100,000.
And yet its military installations included five army bases, two naval bases, four forts, two RAAF bases, seven anti-aircraft batteries, tank traps, and radar.
Valerie Blackett, a gunner born in 1925, recalled being told by a commanding officer that her role in the military effort was “one of the most important in the whole of Australia”.
“You have to protect BHP and the port,” she remembers being told.
Thirty-nine ships were sunk off the coast of Newcastle during World War 2.
Fort Scratchley remains the only location in Australia to have guns fired on an enemy vessel.
Park Battery at Shepherds Hill, is the only place in Australian history that the three armed forces all had a headquarter operation together in the one building with the united purpose of protecting the one place.
A tunnel network does exist below Newcastle’s forts, but are they connected?
RAAF Rathmines was the largest flying boat base in the Southern Hemisphere during WW2.
These fascinating snippets of trivia as well as many more, are revealed in the film that is the result of the banding together of ten local historical societies in one ‘mammoth’ research task.
Fortress Newcastle will be available at the Stories of our Town website from Remembrance Day, Thursday 11th November.
