Fort Bribie Underground Hospital history, claims and counter-claims.
The Underground Hospital was built at Bribie Island, Queensland, Australia
during WW2
to service the men
and women involved in the defence of the Moreton Bay
harbour.
If you worked there or have any feedback please contact me:
Email: Dr. Richard Walding
Research Fellow
School of Science
Griffith University
Home Phone: 61 (0)7 32064976
69 Summit Street, Sheldon, Q, 4157, Australia
LINKS TO
MY RELATED PAGES:
Fort Bribie Home Page - essential reading to see the context of the hospital.
INTRODUCTION Over the past decade there has been a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding
the possible existence of an underground hospital at Fort Bribie. Some of the
mystery is unfolded in the following description of the hospital but rumours
still circulate about a far more complex underground structure that is also
purported to be an underground hospital still there today.
The 5 metre high foredunes at
Fort Bribie today.
The hospital was built into the dunes on the other side .
Possible site of the Casualty Dressing Station built in 1942. Today (11 Sept 2004) it
appears as a V-shaped depression about 6 foot deep between two sandhills
just near the Officers' Quarters. Located by John Groves.
What we know with certainty
Construction of Fort Bribie began soon after Australia declared war on Germany in September
1939. It was only intended to be a temporary fort and by 1940 was
still quite primitive - the guns were mounted on temporary mountings with a projector
and lamp mounted on a high tower operating as a searchlight. It was little value from a defence point of view.
A Regimental Aid Post (RAP) was built at this time. It was a small building
about 10' x 10' even though the plans called for a Casualty Dressing Station
(CDS) of 18' x 40'. This was not to be; not yet anyway. The RAP was a
fibro walled building with a wooden floor and corrugated iron roof set on
concrete stumps. It was in the centre of the barracks part of the fort
equidistant from the canteen, sleeping quarters and Sergeants' Mess. This was
about 760 ft (230m) south of the No. 1 gun. A map of Fort Bribie held in the
National Australian Archives (Brisbane) - BP387/1/0 - shows the building as No.
36.
Regimental Aid Post. The RAP was
staffed by a Medical Corps sergeant and two orderlies. There was no resident
doctor at Fort Bribie. Every day there would be a sick parade for minor injuries
such as cuts on barbed wire, minor gunshot wounds, cold and flu. The medic was able to do minor
stitching but he generally gave the men some Aspros and a day off duty so that they
could lie in bed. Only one patient at a time could fit in the RAP. A visiting doctor, Dr Bart Cummings, would make weekly
visits from Caloundra to give injections (cholera, typhus, tetanus, smallpox etc) but men
could also be evacuated to the Caloundra hospital for serious accidents.
The Underground Hospital. As
Japanese aggression increased the fort was upgraded to become the major defence
installation in the Brisbane - Moreton Bay area. At the beginning of 1942
upgrading began and by April the fort was almost complete. As the war progressed
further south a decision was made to build a more substantial hospital for
expected casualties. Soon after the Battle of the Coral Sea (4-8 May 1942) construction began of a much bigger
hospital than the RAP hut. A building about the size of the original Casualty
Dressing Station was to be built and was to be constructed as much as possible
underground. Some officers wanted to make it a combined hospital and
signal station but this was not allowed under Red Cross protocols (had to keep
guns and ammunition away from hospitals if they were to be safe from the enemy)
so it became a hospital only. A site was selected in a sandhill about 50m
south of the officers' quarters (which were about 50m south of the RAP). The
hospital site is in the area of Building 11 on the Fort Bribie map - marked "CP"
(Control Post) and includes the 15ft contour line for a sandhill - which is the
maximum height for sandhills at the northern end of Bribie Island. The Control
Post structure may have been demolished sometime after the war. No evidence of it exists
today unless it too is underground. The Royal Australian Engineers (RAE Fortress Engineers) working on the searchlights,
water supply and powerhouse were given the job of digging the hole for the
hospital in 1942. RAE Sapper Graham Jenkinson recalled that a couple of dozen RAE
men did this with shovels when they were off duty.
The Civil Constructional Corps (CCC) of the Allied Works Council (AWC)
was allocated the task of constructing the fort buildings (including the
hospital) with the help of the
engineers. The AWC was created by the Curtin Government soon after the fall of
Singapore. The government's economic plan in February 1942 called for total
mobilization and the CCC was created with a workforce of 50 000 - many of whom
were drafted from the Main Roads Department. As well as the CCC men, we can thank
Fort Bribie RAE sappers Graham Jenkinson (later Major), Bill Witt, Frank Foley,
Ray Brohman, Tom Simpson, Jim McDonald, Cpl Eric Sheard, Joe Cryan, Basil
Bleakley, Fred Knox and "Tubby" McKenna for the spadework. RAE officers Lt
Keith Murray, Lt Cosgrove, Warrant Officer George Taylor and Sgt Perc Hunter
were happy to watch and give advice. The CCC men had a small camp just near the site of
the diggings. Gum trees were selected for the walls and numerous large
logs were cut from the bush behind the camp. A lot of ti-trees were also used
for the walls. The roof rafters were made exclusively from ti-trees. Sisalation (a
waterproof bituminous reinforced paper) was used to cover the outside walls
and roof of the building and then bags full of sand were placed on top of the
roof and beside the walls. Sand was then shovelled to cover the bags and
fill in the gaps around the walls. A floor was constructed of hardwood on
bearers on the ground and the interior walls. Graeme Jenkinson recalls the
hospital to be T-shaped with the main ward about 18' x 76' and had 20 beds on
either side and a walkway down the middle. At the end, there was a small
operating theatre in the small part of the "T". Another soldier who helped
with the construction was Pte. Peter Pechey (14th Garrison Battalion, AIF) who
helped dig the hole by hand between February and May 1942. He recalled that
the walls were lined with beautiful tongue and groove (T&G) hardwood
(probably blackbutt) milled at Caboolture. However, Peter recalls the building
as being cross-shaped about 30 yards wide. He thought the ceiling had a slight
peak and said there was definitely no concrete used in making it. Private Stan
Muller was stationed at Fort Bribie in 1942 and concurs with Graeme Jenkinson's
description of a hospital being built south of the battery and recessed into the
sand (but not underground). He also recalls attending the RAP.
Illumination inside the hospital was provided by the Fort's power system.
Once leaves had begun to fall on top of the mound, camouflage was complete.
It is not certain when the construction was finished but it was not used until
July 1943. The first doctor to be stationed at
the hospital was 28 year old militia captain Dr. Noel Ure (Q270069, later QX55284) from Brisbane who
enlisted on 19th July 1943 and moved straight to Fort Bribie. He was a member of
the 101 Australian Light Field Ambulance and left Bribie in February 1944.
Dr Ure is quoted in Peter Ludlow's book Moreton Bay People (2000) as
saying "The underground hospital did exist because I set it up at Fort Bribie in
1943. It was a large underground room with steps descending into it. There were
about 15 stretcher beds set up inside". (p46). In 1993 Dr Ure searched for
evidence and, using a probe, hit something solid about 50 ft south of the
officers' mess. He dug and found a cement slab. It was about 2m long and 1m wide
and had a texture resembling a path but could dig no further. [NOTE: go to
the end of this web page for photos of the recently discovered underground
concrete slab]. The fort closed down in 1945. Dr Ure
revisited the site in 1995 accompanied by a researcher from the Queensland
Government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an attempt to locate the
hospital. Because of advancing Alzheimer's Disease Dr Ure was unable to
locate the structure but said it was somewhere just to the south of the
officers' quarters. He believed that the hospital had concrete walls and roof.
Dr Ure died soon after.
What we don't know
As mentioned before, there has been much speculation about the hospital
particularly as Dr Ure thought the hospital had concrete walls and roof and should
thus be still in existence. If the hospital was made from gum and ti-trees the
white ants would have demolished it by 1946. The stories and claims about the
hospital continue today. Claims include:
1. One informant said
that he went to Fort Bribie in 1996 as part of the 13th Field Battery (Army
Reserve) stationed at Caboolture. They collected keys from someone at Bribie
Island and walked about 100 m south of the No.1 gun emplacement until they
reached a sand hill about 3 m high. The building was found using a metal
detector (metal doors) and the men dug away the sand on the western side to
reveal the padlocked doors. The floor was level with the surrounding
ground and they entered a room about 8 m wide by 9-12 m long and had about 8
steel beds inside. The walls were made of concrete 12" thick. The informant said
that there were doorways in the opposite walls but these had been concreted in.
There was no water on the floor and no medical supplies on any shelves. They
were only in there for a few minutes. The
soldiers padlocked the doors and covered them with sand again. Another informant
who is a sergeant with the same 13th Field Battery said
that the story is
"either false or misunderstood by that other member". He said that when they
went there in 1996 "we did find concrete structure with metal
door behind dunes
however this was not covered by sand and was just off beach". Hmmm!
2. A second informant (Daniel) said
there were two RAPs but these 'splinter-proof' huts were bulldozed in about 1994 by the EPA.
The EPA denies this strenuously and says that any work done there was to make
the place safe and was all done by hand. Daniel
claims to have witnesses to the alleged bulldozing and colour photos of the huts. In the late 1990s
- acting on advice from others (who were allegedly selling morphine recovered
from the hospital) - he found his way into the
hospital through a ventilation duct and found a room about 8-9 ft underground
under a sandhill about 15 ft high.
The walls were 4 ft thick concrete and he walked along a narrow passage with
several colleagues for 5
minutes or so until he came upon the main 'surgical ward' measuring about 20 m x 30 m with
60 bunk beds down
the sides. There were also lots of wheelchairs. Boxes of medical stores
and morphine were still on the shelves. At the end of the room there was a
door which lead down a ramp into a bunker many times the size of the surgical
ward and this housed a jeep, a truck, some outboard motors and officers' mess
and quarters. All of
this was at least 8-9 ft underground.
3. In the Caloundra "Observer"
(April 27, 1994, pages 10,11), a Corporal in the 62nd Infantry Battalion,
Clarrie Espin, is quoted as saying he helped construct the underground hospital
located about half a mile SW of the Fort. He said that about 50 soldiers
from his unit worked on the job with about 20 of them cutting down large ti-trees
for timber, others drove the truck to cart logs to the site and he and about a
dozen others worked on the building. He said "It was built in an E-shape,
with two entrances at either end of the front of the E, facing south". He said
that as here were no doors and as the building was dug into a sand bank, there
was no back entrance or windows and the roof was covered with four feet of sand.
Another unit lined the walls and ceilings - which had an outer covering of tin
over the ti-tree logs - and installed water pipes. Clarrie is reported as saying
"Doctors and nurses quarters took up one-third of the area and the remained
housed 24 beds for patients". In 1994, he said he believed the hospital
was still there - complete with some beds - and was being used as a helicopter
landing pad. His drawing is shown below:
4. In his book "Digging Deeper
into North Bribie Island in World War 2" (2007) author John Groves quotes
Gil Daveney who recalled the hospital being "E" shaped facing South. He believed
that it may have been used for AWAS signallers and later abandoned because of
vermin.
NEWS FLASH - 2007
In January 2007, Geoff Moesker decided to have a
dig around in the area about 50 m south of the Officer's Mess. He dug down about
1 m and hit concrete. Whether this is the roof of a building, a path or whatever
remains to be tested. It could be the mysterious hospital, or it could be a part
of an underground Command Post (or neither). I dug around a bit more on 29th
March and 7th April 2007 and took some close-up photos of the slab. To me it
looks like the floor rather than a roof.
The slab is 100 mm thick and can
be seen beside the chisel about 1 metre under the surface.
A view of another section of the
slab. Facing North.
A close-up of the concrete slab.
The concrete aggregate is very
hard and quite fine in texture.
The surface is quite smooth.
The three mounds look something like
this. They are about 7m between crests.
Image created by Jacob Walding using Maya 6.5
CONCLUSION
However, the true story of the underground hospital
after Dr Ure arrived in May 1943 is anyone's guess. It is certain that
the wooden underground hospital was constructed in 1942 by
RAE, AIF and CCC men but what changes or constructions took place afterwards is not
known. Was another hospital built? Is there anyone
out there with concrete information? Many people claim to have seen and been
inside the concrete hospital but no-one is able to find it now. But we
live in hope of having this mystery cleared up. Were you there after May 1943?
See email address and contact details at the top of the page if you can assist.
Dr Richard Walding BAppSc, GradDipTch, MSc,
MPhil, PhD, FRACI, CChem, FAIP
Research Fellow
Griffith University
