Coasts of Cape York (27 page)

His mother nodded and his father turned and met his eyes and said, “That was very well done Willy.”

“Very scary,” Stick added. “Particularly that take-off in the big waves.”

“It was all horrible,” Marjorie said.

Willy could only nod and resume his seat as the western end of Hedge Reef slid into view. ‘Down there,' he thought. ‘That is where we landed and then had to cruise up and down waiting for the tide and wind. It looks much calmer today.' In spite of himself he strained his eyes to see if he could spot anyone in the water.

Andrew stared down as well, then asked, “What happened to the young bloke you rescued, do you know?”

“Jacob van der Heyden? No idea. Went back to Sydney I suppose,” Willy replied.

“They never did find the blokes who murdered his mate did they?” Stick asked.

“No.”

“What was he looking for?” Andrew asked.

Willy shook his head. “No idea.”

“Treasure, I'll bet,” Stick suggested

“Oh treasure! Baloney!” Norman called from the back.

But the word lingered in Willy's mind as they flew on over the rescue area. ‘Was it treasure?' he wondered.

 

 

CHAPTER 17

 

TO THE POINTY BIT

 

Willy's interest now focused on the coastline to his left. While the aircraft had been cutting diagonally across Princess Charlotte Bay the coastline had at first been so far away as to be just a vague line, half lost in the haze. Now, as they drew slowly closer, the details began to emerge and Willy was able to identify places and name them.

‘We are approaching the place where the ‘Beaufighter' wreck is located,' he thought. He took out his pencil and placed the point of it on the chart at the location of the wreck, then looked out to check their exact location. ‘Down there somewhere,' he thought, staring hard at the bush and scrub in from a long, sandy beach.

A movement beside Willy made him look up. Standing in the aisle and leaning over him to look through the porthole was Hobbs- Mr Jemmerling's Man. “Where are we?” he asked.

Willy felt an instant surge of anxiety mixed with suspicion. ‘Did he wait until now and then sneak over to see where I was looking?' he wondered. For a second or so Willy flustered inside, his mind churning with options. Then he quickly but ‘casually' moved the pencil point and placed it on the nearest major coastal feature that he could identify. “There,” he said.

“Thanks,” Mr Hobbs replied, leaning across to look through the porthole after glancing at the chart. He then said, “I just came to ask if you'd like some afternoon tea?”

Even though he really would have liked some Willy shook his head. “No thanks.”

“If you change your mind there are refreshments in the saloon,” Mr Hobbs replied.

To Willy's relief Mr Hobbs moved along to speak to Andrew. ‘Creepy sod!' Willy thought. Then he leaned across to stare out of the porthole again. He was sure he was looking at the right stretch of coast but could see no sign of any aircraft wreck. ‘This one is in among the beach dunes,' he told himself. After looking around to check that Mr Hobbs had moved away and was not looking he lifted his camera and took two photos.

A short while later the aircraft passed Cape Direction and the intercom crackled. Mr Jemmerling's voice boomed out. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. In a few minutes we will fly over the Aboriginal community of Lockhart River. We are then going to fly around a bit so that I can see what is left of the World War Two airfields in the area. As we do I will give a bit of a running commentary and history, assisted by Mr Beck. Now, if you look out the port side of the aircraft, you will see the buildings of the community and beyond them to the West the airstrip.”

Willy looked out and clearly saw the long bitumen runway. A couple of dirt roads snaked off into the hazy interior or off northwards through jungle covered hills. It looked to be a very isolated place.

Mr Jemmerling came on the intercom with an explanation of what they were looking at. He said, “This is the Iron Range area and during World War Two a number of airfields were built here. They were built by the United States Army engineers of the Forty Sixth Engineer Battalion. They were transported to Portland Roads, which is just north of us, by the SS
Wandana
and the MV
Islander
in June 1942.”

“After constructing a road from Portland Roads the engineers built a short, three thousand foot airstrip to use for admin and medical evacuation. Then they constructed two large airstrips: No 1, named ‘Gordon'; and No2, named ‘Claudie'. No 1 strip was completed by mid August. The first operational use was in September when a squadron of B-26 ‘Marauders' of the U.S. Twenty Second Bomb Group landed to refuel on the tenth, then flew on to attack Japanese targets in Rabaul. They refueled at Port Moresby and then came back to refuel at Iron Range on the thirteenth. Unfortunately one of these aircraft crashed while landing.”

Mr Jemmerling paused to clear his throat while the ‘Catalina' did a wide circle over the airfield. He went on, “Remember that the American strategy was to base all their bombers in Western Queensland, around Cloncurry and Julia Creek, so far inland that there was no possibility of any Japanese raid finding them. The planes were prepared for the missions there, then flew north and refueled here or at one of the strips further up, then went on to New Guinea to do their job, often refueling at Port Moresby on the way. They then flew back, hopping from airfield to airfield. The same planes could just as easily fly from Cloncurry to the Darwin area, refuel and bomb up, go on to strike at the East Indies, then come back. It gave great flexibility and made the bombers almost completely safe from any form of attack. That meant they could just be parked in the open with minimal guards.”

“So the big planes weren't based here, at least not until the war had moved so far north that this was a safe rear area,” Mr Jemmerling explained.

Willy found this fascinating and he realized he had never thought about the strategy of air warfare in such a way. Until then his focus had been on the individuals flying the planes and on air tactics. ‘I need to study things a bit more,' he thought.

The ‘Catalina' went round again, further to the north and west and Mr Jemmerling went on to detail how the RAAF No 26 Operational Base Unit was deployed to run the airfields, and to list more tragic crashes. The worst was on the 16
^th
of November 1942 when a B-24 ‘Liberator' named
Bombs for Nippon
crashed on take off, striking two other ‘Liberators' with its wing tip before crashing into the trees where it caught fire and its bombs exploded, destroying it and a B-17 ‘Flying Fortress'. The total loss was four aircraft and eleven lives, plus two B-24s damaged.

Just thinking about that caused Willy to shudder in horror. He listened with sadness as Mr Jemmerling read more information, detailing another bad aircraft accident which occurred in December 1942 when another ‘Liberator' crashed on take-off from Gordon. Its load of bombs exploded, killing all ten in the crew.

Mr Jemmerling went on to say that in that month the American engineers were moved and civilian workers from the Allied Works Council took over construction. “That means that the Japanese had been pushed back to northern New Guinea. The Americans then based three squadrons of ‘Liberators' of the 90
^th
Bomb Group here: Numbers 319, 320 and 321 Squadrons USAAF, plus the ‘Marauders' of Number 33 Squadron of the 22
^nd
Bomb Group and also the 400
^th
Bomb Squadron and 28
^th
Service Squadron.”

“By then this area had been developed into a large complex with roads, camps, taxiways, bomb and fuel dumps. There was an Australian Radar Station, No 43, on the coast near Portland Roads, and there were Australian Anti Aircraft units defending the strip, though they never fired a shot in anger as no Japanese plane ever came near the place.”

“Gordon was closed in January 1943 for sealing and Claudie became operational but was never satisfactory because of cross-winds and flooding. A second ‘Claudie' strip was then commenced. In February 1943, as the war moved even further from Australia, the American squadrons redeployed north to Port Moresby. The Iron Range strips were then downgraded from an operational base to a transit complex for refueling.”

“There were, unfortunately, more crashes. On the 15
^th
June 1943 Flying Officer N. P. Randall, of Dalby, Queensland, a member of the famous No 76 Squadron RAAF, lost his life when he crash landed his P-40 ‘Kittyhawk' fighter on a beach two miles from Portland Roads. An American pilot was killed in 1944 when a P-47 ‘Thunderbolt' which was landing crashed into his P-40, which was on the ground. In 1946 an RAAF ‘Norseman' transport aircraft doing a ration run crashed in bad weather, killing the three on board, including the pilot, Flying Officer C. W. Law of Blackall in Queensland.”

“In 1944 the area was so safe that the anti aircraft units and coastal artillery were removed and the airfield handed over to the RAA.F. Later it was handed to the Department of Civil Aviation. By then the war was over. But that isn't the end of the story. Part of the old Gordon strip was sealed and that is the airfield you can see now. It can handle most twin-engine aircraft and RAAF types such as ‘Caribou' transports.”

“The reason for that was a unique experiment carried out in 1964. To try to ascertain the effects of nuclear weapons on troops fighting in the tropics the army placed vehicles, guns and dummies in trenches in the jungle near here and then exploded hundreds of tons of conventional explosives. These were on a steel tower above the tree tops. It was called ‘Operation Blowdown' and I was hoping to see some sign of it. We will now just circle the area and look.”

Willy found all this fascinating and for the next fifteen minutes he stared eagerly down, but was quite unable to detect any sign of where a huge explosion might once have taken place. Nor could anyone else. As his father said, “I guess that the jungle has had time to grow back in forty years.”

“They would never be allowed to do it nowadays,” Willy's mother commented. “The environmentalists would stop it.”

There was then another sad story. They circled over a jungle covered ridge to the North West and looked down at the site where a civilian ‘Metroliner' crashed when trying to land in bad weather in 2005. Once again Willy wondered how such a tragedy could happen and hoped he would never be involved in such a terrible event.

The next place the plane flew over was the tiny jetty at Portland Roads. As they did Mr Jemmerling added that he was reliably informed that there were no remains of aircraft wrecks in the Iron Range area. Mr Beck confirmed this. On hearing this Willy thought, ‘That makes our wrecks even more important.'

Mr Jemmerling then added, “Nor are there any of the mythical aircraft allegedly left behind by the Americans when they left, so we are not landing to look. We are now flying on to the tip of Cape York.”

The ‘Catalina' straightened up on a northerly course across Weymouth Bay, allowing Willy to identify the winding Pascoe River. He mentioned this to Andrew who nodded and said that he knew where they were. Willy twisted to look and saw that Andrew held a hydrographic chart. Andrew then said that back in 1848 the explorer Edmund Kennedy had experienced trouble with thick jungle in that area and that the Pascoe River was notorious for saltwater crocodiles.

“How on earth do you know that?” Willy joked.

“Because I pay attention in school; and because I am very interested in the history of exploration, particularly the sea explorers,” Andrew replied.

‘That figures,' Willy thought. Out of politeness he said, “Good, keep me informed.”

The next area of interest had nothing to do with aircraft. It was another huge area of massive, scrub-covered sand dunes inland from Cape Grenville. After staring at the tangle for several minutes Willy shook his head. ‘I'd hate to have to try to cross that sort of place on foot,' he thought.

The country from then on seemed to be one vast, trackless wilderness to Willy. The coast was the same alternating sequence of rocky headlands (mostly red in this part of the country), each with a swamp area in its lee; and then a long stretch of sandy beach. The beaches were almost pure white sand and he learned this was because they were largely composed of coral sand, rather than the grains of granite found in the Cairns area. Inland was a vast area of low hills and flat plains covered with what looked to be a tangle of some sort of scrub.

‘That doesn't look very pleasant either,' he thought.

Mr Beck came on the intercom to announce that they were now flying over the area where the ‘Airacobras' had all crash landed back in 1942. “And over near the other side of the Peninsula in the swamps at the mouth of the Jardine River,” he added. That got Willy staring down at the stretches of beach with great interest but there was no sign of any wrecks at all. “All taken away years ago, or lost in the sea and sand,” Mr Beck explained.

They flew low over the extensive areas of mangrove swamps around the mouths of the Escape River and Jacky Jacky Creek. Andrew said, “That is where Edmund Kennedy was speared by the Aborigines back in 1848. I read that if he and Jacky Jacky had been able to safely cross the Escape River they would have been safe.”

“Who was Jacky Jacky?” Stick asked.

“Kennedy's Aboriginal guide,” Andrew replied.

Willy was puzzled. “Why would they have been safe?”

“I read that the tribe who inhabited the land on the other side of the river was friendly,” Andrew answered.

“Wouldn't this Jacky Jacky person have been safe anyway, being an Aborigine?” Marjorie queried.