STORY OF EXPLOSIVES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4960, 25 February 1937, Page 2

STORY OF EXPLOSIVES

POLICE INFORMED OF SECRET CACHE. Sydney, February 8. Gangs of fettlers are removing ballast from between the rails of the main Melbourne-Sydney railway line, a mile and a half north of Wangaratta, in a search for a cache of explosives. The information about this secret explosives dump was given to the officer in charge of the wireless patrol (Sub-Inspector J. R. Knott), after the capture of two men yesterday. The informant explained that he made the revelation because he did not want “some poor ganger or a trainload of passengers to be blown up.” The man draw a plan of the locality and gave a precise location for the cache. His directions were: "Go along the railway line for a mile and a half north of Wangaratta, and you will find a forked tree near the line. Take a dead centre line from between the tree forks and over the top of a post in the railway fence. The explosives are planted 'under the ballast between two rails at that spot.” Senior-Detectives Sickerdiek and Davis, of the Central C. 1.8. Division, took the informant to Wangaratta yesterday in a fast police car. They reached Wangaratta at 5.30 p.m., and went on to the place where the explosives were said to be hidden. There they found the forked tree exactly as the man had described it in Melbourne. The ballast was dug out from the track at the spot, but by the time darkness had fallen, no sign had been found of any buried explosives. The detectives then returned to Melbourne with their informant, who was surprised that the explosives could not be located. He thought that someone, knowing of the cache, must have removed them. They had been planted last Tuesday, he said.

Since last Tuesday scores of trains carrying hundreds of passengers have passed safely over the place where the explosives are said to have been planted.