VITAL WAR SECRET

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 September 1945, Page 6

VITAL WAR SECRET

HOKESVILLE, AUSTRALIA

SYDNEY, September. 4.. The strangest town in Australia is Hokesville. It looks exactly like any other small Australian town with its butcher’s shop (Alf Jones, late othe A.1.F.), ■ Bellamy s billiard saloon, Ryan’s Hotel, the store and neat little weatherboard cottages stragglm-, away from the main street. Yet the town has one difference—no one lives there. , <(Tjr Hokesville (pronounced Hoaxville”) was the unofficial name given to Headquarters of No. 1 Central Reserve, R.A.A.F., and an Army Old”' nance unit. Hokesville was perfection in camouflage. It was one of the most hush-hush set-ups brought about in Australia by the war. Stored in tne area around the faked township were some of the deadliest weapons of war ever brought to Australia. Chemical warfare bombs, containing phosgene and mustard gas, were hidden there. The Allies were ready to reply to poison gas with poison gas had the enemy used it. When No. 1 Central Reserve was opened on April 1, 1942, Intelligence and Security believed that the Japanese might have had information of the approximate locality of big dumps. There was real fear that Japanese aircraft might fly over on reconnaissance. But an airman swooping over Hokesyille, even had he come down to rooftop level, would have kept on his way, satisfied that he was passing over just one more country town. It might seem that security experts went tb absurd lengths when they went as far as putting names on dummy shops around the town that wasn’t a town. But dummy shops without names would have been suspicious. The bogus hotel bad “Ryan s Hotel XXX” written in huge letters across the roof. That was done for the benefit of spying airmen, sweeping low. , The site for Hokesville was not selected by chance. A disused tunnel (the old main Western line ran through it) was an ideal storage place for chemical warfare bombs. Around the area were real farms and homei steads. An old stone church stands just outside the prohibited area. As part of the camouflage scheme real cattle were allowed to graze in the area itself. Once a papier mache horse and cart stood outside Ryan’s Hotel. It stood and stood and stood. But the imaginary driver never breasted the fictitious bar of Ryan’s phantom hotel. At the peak period—during May of this year—l2,ooo tons of bombs — high explosive, pyrotechnics, and other deadly missiles, were handled at No. 1 Central Reserve. On an average 6000 tons of bombs passed in and out of Hokesville each month,