During World War II, the nearby Stranger Hill Reserve was used by the Royal Australian Air Force squadrons for ‘bombing practice’.
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00:00If I was standing on this hill during World War II, I may have needed one of these.
00:09Not because of enemy aircraft, but because of practice bombing.
00:14During World War II, three Royal Australian Air Force squadrons used this area to drop
00:21chalk bombs in metal casings.
00:25In later life, local farmer Merv Edlington remembered in quite graphic detail his close
00:32encounter with one of those chalk dust bombs.
00:38By gee, I had to duck one day.
00:40A plane came so low that I got covered with the leaves off the tree I was under.
00:46The wing of the plane chopped them off.
00:49The horse I'd been riding took off and took a week to catch.
00:55Earlier in World War I, the area was slated as an arsenal with 4,000 people and their families
01:02to move here to manufacture armaments.
01:05With Tuggeranong Homestead as the administrative centre.
01:09Thankfully, the war ended before the arsenal came to fruition.
01:15Instead, at Tuggeranong Homestead at the end of the war, Charles Bean and his team moved
01:21in and used it as a base to research and write the history of Australia's part in the Great
01:29War.
01:31In more recent times, the homestead, one of the region's more historical pastoral properties,
01:36has become an events centre.
01:38But on rare open days, you can still see links to its colourful past.
01:47Places like this convict barn built in the late 1830s, when adding a concrete floor to
01:52house his Model T Ford, Bean apparently found an iron shackle here from the convict times.
01:59You can also see the remains of what, according to local folklore at least, was a whipping post.
02:06This restored a furphy water tank.
02:08Of course, these Aussie icons have a connection to World War One as well.
02:12They were used to cut water for Australian army personnel at Gallipoli and the Middle East
02:17and other places.
02:18The carts became popular as gathering places where soldiers could exchange gossip, rumours
02:23and fanciful tales.
02:25Much like today's water cooler discussions.
02:28Hence the word furphy entered our lexicon.
02:33And this senescent willow tree, believed to have been planted in the 1830s from a cutting
02:40collected from a tree shading Napoleon's grave on the island of St Helena.
02:48Oh and not to forget this old cricket pitch.
02:51It's the oldest concrete cricket pitch in Canberra.
02:55It was added for recreation during the Bean era.
02:58A word of caution though, they ran out of concrete, so it's a few yards short of a standard length.
03:04Which means, if you are facing a fast bowler, you might need one of these.
03:09Peace!
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03:38Peace!