Charleville - Part 4

Yes, there is still more to share from Charleville.

The final place we were to visit at Charleville was the Secret World War II Air Base.  

During  WWII, there were 3,500 American servicemen based at Charleville and the whole town kept it a secret.  Charleville was selected, as they already had an airfield, used by Qantas, was nice and flat and had lots of cover from the surrounding mulga scrub.  It was also far enough away that Japanese planes could not reach that far and have sufficient fuel to return to Japan.

This gives you an indication of how things were hidden by the naturally occuring mulgas.

There has been a museum established to share information about those times and you can also do a tag along tour of the old base to learn more about it.  There isn’t a great deal of original infrastructure, as at the end of the war, the buildings were either demolished or sold to locals to be transported elsewhere.  We opted to do the tour as well as visit the museum.  Let’s start with the tour.

As I said, there isn’t a great deal to see.  There was just the concrete floor of the shower block.

These depressions were dug and lined with bitumen to be baths.  They were used by the servicemen to maintain the required cleanliness.

There was an onsite dance hall, which after the war was removed to Charleville and became the RSL Club.  Sadly, it has since burnt down.

Remember Harry Corones, of the Hotel Corones.  Well, he held dances at his hall every night except Sunday, for the US servicemen.  Several local girls married men from the US and moved over there after the war, including his daughter.

One building that does remain is the Norden Bomb Vault.  The building was used to house the Norden Bomb Sight, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the US military in WWII.  The sight was loaded onto planes just prior to them leaving for a mission.  It was always under armed guard and housed in this vault when not in use.  

It was a gadget made up of mirrors, motors, gears and  levers and was used to determine exactly when to release a bomb.  It was claimed to be accurate to hit a 100 foot circle from an altitude of 21,000 feet, but in actual use, less than that.

However, it turns out that the blueprints of the Norden Bomb Sight, had been smuggled by a spy to the Germans back in 1938.  Zoom in to read about it.

Next, we went to the museum.  It turns out it only opened in 2023.

The first section of the museum is all about the “Queen Mary”, which was converted to a troop ship for WWII.  Most of the US servicemen arrived on her.  

I was particularly interested in this, not for that reason, but because my Dad sailed on her to Singapore for his WWII service over there.

The museum was interesting in giving details of what was entailed to maintain and feed so many men.  There was also details on how it affected the locals and some of the significant people that were involved.  Really informative.

Back at the caravan park that evening, we were treated to a spectacular sunset.

The fire pit area was visited by the local possum.  The little kids were delighted with it.

And that concluded our time in Charleville.  It was really worth visiting the area and staying for a few days.