Scorched Earth

by Rosen, Sue;

  – to organise and control logging operations and haulage.

  – to form special mobile parties of storm cutters to supply the fighting front with timber requirements at urgent call within danger areas. These parties will be formed on military lines, be self-contained and possess such mobility that they can be quickly transferred from district to district by their own transport.

  (v) Roading and tank traps:

  – using forestry plant and equipment.

  – to make roads for timber supply.

  – clear bush roads for military use.

  – prepare tank traps and fill them with logs and debris for burning, or as conventional traps.

  2. LABOR (Defence Constructions):

  An engineer of the Main Roads Board, Public Works Department or Shire, will be the Actions Officer:

  To dig trenches and tank traps at military requirement.

  To cache or destroy stores.

  To build and repair bridges.

  To co-operate with bushfire fighting forces.

  Obtain and set barbed wire defence.

  Loading and unloading at dumps and rail sidings &c.

  Remove explosives.

  Build and repair roads.

  Erect camouflage.

  Any other normal work as called upon by military.

  3. ENGINEERS:

  All N.R.M.A. and R.A.C.A. men, garage owners and mechanics from garages and other factories, with such transport as is essential to their mobility, will:

  (i) Supply petrol, oil, parts;

  (ii) Remove, hide or destroy all mechanical equipment, oils and stores.

  (iii) Render themselves mobile, and undertake repairs &c. for both the military and the Commandos along the military rear.

  4. COMMISSARIAT:

  This Column will be composed of the butchers, bakers, grocers, druggists, fruiterers, cafes, cooks, and other civil community purveyors and foodstuffs and the like; also bootmakers - with the transport used by them in their civil economy.

  This transport will be loaded to capacity and will report to the Camp Q.M. at the nearest C.C.C. camp.

  The District Action Officer will be assisted by the principal caterers.

  Their function will be to provide canteen service for the Columns and the fighting forces.

  War rationing will prevail, and cards must be kept.

  5. PRIMARY PRODUCTION:

  The District Agricultural Department Officer will assume command as District Action Officer.

  Cattle and stock owners will select the best half of their herds and flocks, and will drive them via appointed stock routes and secluded camping spots along the line of retreat - milking en route if possible, for supply to C.C.C. camps, or slaughtering tired beasts for similar use.

  Quiet cattle can be used as pack animals, if led only.

  The second half of the herds and flocks will remain on the farms under men to be detailed by their owners - to be milked or slaughtered for the service of the fighting front.

  Those which cannot be so used must be driven off into the bush - if about to be captured - or destroyed.

  Water tank taps to be opened; other water supply if possible to be destroyed, if about to be captured. All water tank roof catchment and otherwise to be punctured.

  Food supplies to be cached or destroyed, if about to be captured.

  Probably butcher’s sheep should be taken back first with most milkers and slaughter cattle and the balance of milkers and cattle left for supply to military, as the big stock can travel faster.

  6. MEDICAL SERVICES:

  The senior resident doctor will be the District Action Officer; a Deputy should also be appointed.

  This C.C.C. will consist of evacuated doctors, dentists, hospital staffs, Ambulance, First Aid groups, funeral directors and the like.

  Horse drawn First Aid carts will accompany evacuees; these will give first aid to those suffering minor injuries or collapse; they will be in charge of persons who will refuse to be imposed upon.

  Motor ambulances will convey serious cases (too serious for first aid carts to handle) to next outward stopping place, where doctor (there will be one stationed at a casualty clearing station at each stopping place), will arrange for patient, if he considers necessary, to be taken to a base hospital.

  Motor hearses should be converted into ambulances.

  ADDENDA NOTES -

  1. Coastal gaols should be evacuated inland.

  2. Forestry Prison Camps at Mannus, Glen Innes and Oberon are now understaffed with prisoners, and the remainder could probably be concentrated at one of these, leaving two for the reception of (a) Aliens; (b) Reformatory boys.

  3. Enemy prisoners-of-war and aliens could be probably used in inland areas for wood cutting and charcoal burning, logging, roadwork in the Rylestone mountain forests, water supply, or building reception accommodation.

  4. Lubricating oil is more essential even than petrol; the seeds of the castor oil plant contain 50% of oil, and a screw press suffices to extract the oil.

  The castor oil plant can be grown successfully inland in dry Climatic Zones 5.6 and 7.6. It has easy and rapid growth, copious seeding, and gives early return.

  5. New Zealand flax produces a fibre which when properly dressed withstands moisture as well as the best manilla rope. It should flourish on the Blue Mountains.

  6. Country plumbers and mechanics could turn out hand-grenade containers for guerilla use.

  7. Secret aerodromes and emergency landing places could be located back from the coastal front, and probably be carried out of original bush to a defensive design.

  The evolution of aerodromes has been:

  (a) Complete clearing and levelling in peacetime, and erection of one very prominent hangar.

  (b) Defence in wartime by obstruction &c. - e.g. stumps on other than fairways &c. and by camouflage &c.

  This suggests that emergency wartime aerodromes can be the more quickly and logically devised by:

  (a) Felling all trees to a stump height of 3 feet.

  (b) Grubbing and levelling only the fairways, viz. SE-NW, NE-SW, and N-S: and leaving the stumps on the unoccupied zones, and pointing them so that (a) parachutists landing on them will be injured; (b) tanks after breaking off the points will find their bellies fouled at 2'3"-2'6"; (c) head and shoulder protection will be afforded to defenders. The resultant logs may also be left, arranged radially so as to assist in the fouling. A fire should be passed over the felling to burn all debris except the stumps and logs.

  (c) Building several small hangars within the edge of natural cover.

  Diagramatically, the layman imagines something like the attached (see diagram).

  The design of a defended aerodrome could thus be carved out of the original standing timber to the finished shape! - more expeditiously and more economically than by peace-to-war conversion.

  The fairways could be covered by gunfire or traps at the centre against enemy aeroplanes or parachutists - and carry a centre guide line as on highways, with sunken lights if necessary.

  8. Cattle can be used to explode enemy mines and provide a screen for advancing troops.

  9. Coastal sawmills should be worked as many shifts as possible, and sawn stocks transferred inland for reception accommodation, and reserve supplies.

  10. Water supplies control route: in many areas these are not abundant; the major ones should be commanded; in a retreat the minor ones could sometimes be poisoned.

  11. Aboriginal trackers and aborigines on occasion can be usefully employed in guerilla work.

  12. The Japanese manifestos declare: “Those who do not obey, or who take hostile actions against the Japanese Forces will be shot. Co-operate with the Japanese forces.”

  No Australian will co-operate with the Japanese forces: therefore there is no alternative but to definitely organise the contrary!

  13. Caches should be established beforehand in the bush - of grenades, tools, materials and supplies - for the use of the C.C.C. a
nd guerillas.

  DEFENCE OF SYDNEY (Newcastle-Pt. Kembla):

  ø/ NO EVACUATION - EVEN FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN:

  There can be no evacuation from this urban zone of concentrated industry,

  - but only withdrawal sector by sector under stress of invasion.

  Indeed such evacuation, voluntary or otherwise, as can be organised would be cancelled out by war concentrations and supply services, and by the arrival of evacuees from other countries.

  We can only endeavor to reduce war-time congestions, and avert stampede and confusion by a plan of organised emergency withdrawal in which every citizen has his part prior-defined.

  Every institution and organisation, private or Governmental, should re-orient its activities to the war emergency, and to state for approval the war functions which it can assume as an existing staff organisation. (This method will often give quicker and better controlled results with greater responsibility than by disintegration of existing organisations to establish new loose voluntary part-time organisations. The existing management can then be held responsible to the supreme Civil Collaboration Management for approved war functions.)

  A decentralisation policy should operate urgently - and the first step would probably be the adjustment of railway freight rates and fares to stimulate this.

  Munitions industries should be transferred or duplicated inland. (Slazenger’s, making rifle stocks out of Coachwood, Frederick Rose & Co., making airplane ply out of Coachwood logs, could function closer to their sources of supply of raw material at Armidale.)

  In sectors exposed to air raids and shellings - but well defended and not imminent landings -

  Evacuation should not be a policy!

  This includes school children!

  ø/ At 18 and over, children are men and women for the purpose of war.

  ø/ Mothers and young children should not be separated: and wives prefer to remain with their husbands: their evacuation should be voluntary only: facilities for voluntary evacuation and dispersal through inland country towns should be developed - although even this may not hold against human nature.

  ø/ Boys and girls of 14-18, however, are the soldiers of 1943/46, and the post-war generation - these should be withdrawn to country bases for war and post-war training.

  1. PLANS SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR THE RETIREMENT OF THE CIVIL POPULATION FROM THE INDUSTRIAL URBAN AREAS ONLY IN THE EVENT OF NECESSITY DUE TO IMMINENT ENEMY LANDING OR ADVANCE, AND THEN ONLY FROM AFFECTED SECTORS.

  (The C.C.C. rural organisation could be developed for this purpose.)

  2. BOYS AND GIRIS OF 14-18 SHOULD BE WITHDRAWN TO COUNTRY BASES FOR WAR AND POST-WAR TRAINING - AS CADETS.

  1. Each to be vocationally analysed, and posted to the training group indicated thereby.

  2. School training to be continued accordingly.

  3. With auxiliary training in war services.

  ø/ EMERGENCY WATER SUPPLIES VITAL:

  The vital question, however, is: “Is Sydney to die of thirst, or stampede inland?”

  In Hongkong the Japanese bombed the water supplies and pipes before they passed on to military objectives.

  Obviously that would happen here!

  The water supply position should be put on a war basis at once by:-

  (a) Stimulation of voluntary well-sinking and dam-sinking instantly by home dwellers.

  (b) Severest rationing of water supply for both homes and factories, in districts where water is available by shallow boring, e.g. Botany, North Shore Line.

  (c) Rain tanks &c. to be installed as far as possible.

  (d) Municipalities and Shires to be instructed to organise emergency water supply for their areas, and to be responsible for delivery to key points in emergency:

  (i) Establishment of municipal wells and bores (see the Youhotsky Scheme [later in this chapter]).

  (ii) Organising and extending their water cart services against emergency, improvising additions, and keeping them full.

  (iii) Selecting and converting sunken tennis courts, baths, and dam sites into local auxiliary reservoirs.

  (iv) Preparing plans &c. for salt water distillations.

  (v) Arranging deliveries in emergency.

  (vi) Relaxing the normal peace-time water standards - domestic boiling to be prescribed where considered necessary.

  (vii) Use of salt water for street flushing and fire fighting.

  (e) Water Board to lay small emergency pipe lines to selected key points against the possibility of destruction of main pipe lines.

  (f) Water supply for non-essential industry to be (a) severely rationed; (b) cut off in emergency.

  (g) In the outer suburbs, where the pan system will suffice, sewerage extension should cease, and existing sewerage disconnected, with reversion to the pan system.

  (h) Householders to fill and keep filled in containers (bottles if nothing better) a week’s supply of drinking water (only).

  (i) Existing industrial bores to be deepened at once.

  (j) Motor radiators even in unused cars to be kept filled.

  (k) Railway Department to organise emergency water carriage to the city.

  Provisional evacuation camps should be prepared just below the main reservoirs (but off the water course), so as not to contaminate the water supply and so as to be assured of water supply in the event of pipeline destruction. Then in the event of inadequate emergency supply in the city, these provisional evacuation camps can accommodate the surplus population from water famine areas, pending the organisation of evacuation inland.

  ø/ RECEPTION ORGANISATION INLAND:

  Every inland community should call a public meeting and organise and officer a Reception Organisation Committee:

  – To make an inventory of available empty houses; stores, offices and meeting rooms.

  – To ascertain capacity and potentiality of boarding houses, room letting, paying guests, billeting &c.

  – To list, stating rents, all living accommodation which could be mobilised in emergency.

  – To define, without progress committee propaganda, the authentic power and industrial possibilities of its location under a decentralisation policy - and to make a brief and guaranteed business statement of practical business propositions.

  – To state briefly and precisely, the accommodation, drill ground, or aerodrome potentialities of its golf courses, clubs, racecourses and showgrounds.

  – To define the water supply capacity of its location - and to demarcate emergency water supplies in its locality.

  – To state its hospital capacity and extension potential.

  – To plan for emergency absorption of (a) Youth trainees 14-18; (b) Voluntary evacuees; (c) Invasion evacuees.

  R.300

  John A. Youhotsky,

  9 George Street,

  Pennant Hills, N.S.W.,

  27th January, 1942.

  Dear Sir,

  Emergency Water Supply for Sydney.

  The weakest link in the defence of Sydney Metropolitan Area is undoubtedly its water supply. This water supply is dangerously inadequate due to drought, and extremely vulnerable, because it depends on distant dams and long pipelines.

  The Japanese tactics in similar cases were always to attack and interrupt water supply rather than try to overcome the purely military centres of resistance. Such was the case in the earlier wars: Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, and Tsingtao in the war of 1914. Hongkong fell much sooner than anticipated because the Japanese struck not only on the catchment dams, but on the pipelines of Victoria well before they attacked any military fortifications. Lack of water forced the surrender of the garrison.

  One of the main difficulties of the defence of Singapore will again be the fact that sources of water are on the mainland, scores of miles from the perimeter of the fortress proper.

  This is a most dangerous situation, and the case of Sydney is exactly similar!

  As early as 1940 it appeared that emergency was unavoidable and I published in
the December issue of 1940 “Australasian Engineer” an article pointing out the military weaknesses of Sydney water supply, as well as indicating some corrective measures.

  I enclose a copy of this Journal, and call your attention to page 3 &c. in it.

  UNDERGROUND SUPPLY FOR EMERGENCY:

  My main thesis is that sufficient underground supply could be had within the Sydney metropolitan area, and should be immediately developed as an emergency proposition. This is necessary because:-

  (1) Dams on the catchment areas might fall into enemy hands before any attempt be made to attack the capital, which could be forced into submission through lack of water.

  (2) Water of all open reservoirs can be poisoned (or bacterially infected) from enemy aircraft. Poisoning of the smaller reservoirs and wells by Germans in Russia is being reported now. All our water comes from open storage.

  (3) A combination of the above two cases is quite feasible, namely, the distant dams might be seized, while water in the nearer ones might be poisoned (Woronora and Warragamba, and open channel from Prospect).

  BOTANY:

  Under the emergency circumstances, the water riches of Botany should be instantly tapped and widespread public and private sinking of bores or dug-wells should be encouraged in all suburbs.

  In accordance with Water Board’s data, in the sands of Botany, a few feet under the ground, is a store of 31,000 million gallons of water. This is 1½ times more than the sum total of all storage reservoirs of the Water Board at present! With the use of about 20 gals. per capita per day, water stored at Botany would be sufficient for about 3 years. A siege of such a duration has never yet been recorded in history.

  20 gallons per day per capita is the normal consumption of Leningrad, Moscow, and other Russian cities where water is charged in proportion to metered consumption, and should be quite adequate for citizens of Sydney also.

  PRACTICAL SCHEME:

  I propose to subdivide the whole area of Botany of about 7,000 acres (containing as per Water Board data about 31,000 million gallons in underground storage in sands) into 60 sub-areas of 117 acres, and sink a bore of 12” in each of these sub-areas. The electrical (or power) turbine deep well pump will yield about 25,000 gallons per hour from such a 12” bore. With the population of Sydney taken at 1,500,000, then 60 wells like this will be sufficient: