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Martin Butler's Tunnel Vision - Refocussed!
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Josh and M continue their review of not one, not two, but not quite three editions of Martin Butler's book "Tunnel Vision," the best argument yet for a hidden tunnel complex under Auckland's North Head. In this episode a lot of testimony is discussed...
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Transcript
Internet Glitches and Apologies
00:00:00
Speaker
Today's recording was beset with some internet-related glitches. Unlike previous glitches, which have been definitely on the Chinese end, today's glitches were definitely on the end of Aotearoa.
00:00:12
Speaker
We apologise for some awkward pauses or strange line deliveries caused by these internet hiccups. Thank you for your cooperation.
Humorous Skit on Reading Dangers
00:00:24
Speaker
Previously on the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy... God, I hate reading. It gives you cancer. As a doctor, I'm afraid to say the cancer is terminal. Bury me on North Head. Or is it in North Head? Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to today to say goodbye to Josh Addison killed reading.
00:00:45
Speaker
Josh, Josh, Josh, wake up, Josh, wake up. What? What? What? You were laughing in your sleep. And smiling, I felt so at peace with the world, like all my cares had disappeared.
00:01:00
Speaker
What were you dreaming about? um but Nothing. Nothing. Should we get back to that book review? Josh, are you alright? your Your eye is twitching like it's never twitched before.
00:01:13
Speaker
He's a maniac, hey!
Introduction of Hosts and Book Review Setup
00:01:20
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to brought you today by Josh
00:01:41
Speaker
and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison in Guangzhou, China. They are Dr. M R X Denteth. We've got another, well not another, we've got a continuing book review this week.
00:01:54
Speaker
Anything before that? no, was just thinking, i mean, when it comes to sequels, most of them are not equals.
Unexpected Twists in Butler's Chapter 8
00:02:03
Speaker
But this, like The Empire Strikes Back, may well be sequel with a difference, because depending on how much time we spend on Chapter 8, my, does this go in some directions you would not expect.
00:02:18
Speaker
It does go places, yes. Well, no no no beating about the bush then. Chuck in a chime and we'll start talking about the mysterious Chapter 8.
00:02:30
Speaker
Chapter 8, Defective Memories. Yeah, so so quick recap, I guess, just to just to to make sure we're all in the in the same spot. We're talking about Martin Butler's book, Tunnel Vision, about the hunt for hidden tunnels underneath your head.
00:02:48
Speaker
tunnelal vision additional one tunnel vision a distribution too Tunnel Vision Edition 2.5, technically Edition 3, but not really that different apart from a final chapter at the end, which may or may not be a chapter because of the weird numbering system.
00:03:04
Speaker
But we're not there yet. Where we are at the moment is. Mr Butler has taken us through the history of early aviation in New Zealand, the history of North Head and what may or may not have been sent to it and stored there, the history of investigations into North Head, one of which resulted in a court case,
00:03:21
Speaker
which resulted in a big investigation by the Department of Conservation, which concluded that there were no hidden tunnels under North Head and therefore no mysterious ah aircraft or unexploded ammunition stored in them.
00:03:35
Speaker
But part of the investigation involved around 50 witness statements, either given directly to the inquiry or in the form of um interviews recorded by John Earnshaw in the case of people who had since died by the time the investigation took place. all right, so i should but I should point out, so these are these are statutory declarations. So these are bits of testimony which are presented to go before
Statutory Declarations on North Head Tunnels
00:03:59
Speaker
the court. So they're witness statements.
00:04:01
Speaker
And yes, most of them were not given in court. They were presented to the court by Jern. Jern? By Jern. By John Earnshaw. I was trying to combine John and Earnshaw. And I got Jernshaw.
00:04:16
Speaker
ah Yeah, I don't know he was Jernshaw to his friends. But anyway, probably they were provided to the court by John Earnshaw. yeah Now, if you recall, Judge Elias ah but basically disregarded all of the the testimony that said, oh, yes, there were are these secret tunnels there. I remember going to them when I was a boy and things like that and gave a number of reasons for them.
00:04:39
Speaker
mr Butler... was not happy with that and thought, well, he, so he decided, i'm I myself am going to look through all of these witness statements to see if I find them more credible than Judge Elias did.
00:04:51
Speaker
And so we get to chapter eight, as you say, defective memories. Chapter eight is over 50 pages long. I'm fairly certain it must be the largest chapter in the book. And it's reproductions of um a whole lot of of these statutory declarations, as well as a sprinkling of sort of reports from news outlets that are saying similar things.
00:05:11
Speaker
You know, i I'll just jump in here and just point out. So we're told that there were a number of statutory declarations. we don't get all of them.
00:05:23
Speaker
So Butler is cherry-picking the statutory declarations that presumably he feels present the best case for there being a And that's going to be interesting in a minute. and Yeah, yeah and it's and so the ones he does pick out...
00:05:40
Speaker
Some of them are interesting insofar that they're suggestive of something more to Monoica than is publicly available. Some are interesting because they don't actually seem to contradict the idea that there is no hud hidden... Hadden?
00:05:57
Speaker
really having a problem with these vowel sounds today. But you've got no portmentos on the brain. I know. I've seen a doctor about it that's apparently incurable. Some of them are consistent with the idea that there are no hidden tunnels in North Head, and some of them basically deserve the accolade of being whack-a-mole stories.
00:06:18
Speaker
A little bit, yes. Now, last time we talked about Judge Elias' reasoning for disregarding most of these, and they were along the lines of were all they were all at least 30 years old at the time. Some of them were given by people who were children at the time. Some of them were given by servicemen who had also served in other forts and possibly were were getting getting so one fort confused for another.
00:06:38
Speaker
ah few things like that. One thing I didn't mention was that right at the start, She basically said she flat-out disregarded any of the statements that appeared to be obvious exaggerations with talk of underground cities and North End being honeycombed with with with with systems of tunnels with multiple layers.
00:06:55
Speaker
Butler does not seem to have a problem with some of these ones, I think we'll see. Now, i when i when I was making my notes in this chapter, I kind of skipped over it fairly quickly because they all seem to say similar things to me, except for the few that stuck out, which we'll definitely have a look at now. But... um I gather you want to go through them in a bit more ah bit more comprehensively. Well, given that I've read this chapter three times now in different versions of the book...
00:07:22
Speaker
I feel that I have an understanding of what's going on here, which means that we don't have to spend the entire episode talking about these witness statements, but it is kind of interesting to look at how they how they are characterized.
00:07:38
Speaker
So there are 25 statutory declarations presented in this chapter, and we're told that there were more than 50 presented at court. So we can assume that 25 of those are either repetition of the same thing, so Butler has quite wisely excluded the ones that are just verbatim recitations of other people's claims, or, and this is the worrying thing, maybe some of them are actually really quite weird, and Butler has gone, well, obviously that's implausible, I'm not presenting that for my case, but if that was the case, it does speak to
00:08:17
Speaker
Earnshaw's thesis about what witness statements he thought were reliable. Even Butler is going, yeah, some of the stuff we shouldn't talk about. But even in amongst the 25 we get,
00:08:32
Speaker
There are problems. And essentially, there's basically three kinds of problem. problems One problem is that some of these statements are 30 years old.
00:08:46
Speaker
And this is not really talked about at all in Butler's manuscript here. which is the worry about the reliability of memory, especially for things that have been recalled from 30 years prior.
00:09:00
Speaker
It's just assumed that these people have remarkable memories and good memories. And this kind of fits into an issue we talked about in the first episode,
00:09:11
Speaker
butler does this thing where if you're a member of the armed services or taken to be a reliable character in general then your memory must be really really good this is essentially the bolt versus salt thing he takes it that salt is unreliable because he's a bit of a curious character a bit of a cad was george bolt is sterling member of society, there's no way he could be wrong. I mean, he's George Bolt.
00:09:43
Speaker
How dare you call into question George Bolt? Yeah, there's a bit of a confusion between getting something wrong and deliberately getting something wrong, essentially. Like, like it's entirely possible for a person to say something that they honestly, hand on heart, believe with all their heart, but they're They're just mistaken.
00:10:00
Speaker
And that's saying someone's mistaken is not the same as saying they're a liar, which would be the sort of character disparagement that that that seems to get er Mr. Butler riled up. But he so basically sort of conflates the two. He treats as though if if you were to say that these people were mistaken in their recollection, you're essentially calling them liar.
00:10:20
Speaker
which makes you a horrible person. Yeah, so that's problem one. Problem two, quite a few of these statements involve people who didn't see any hidden tunnels.
00:10:33
Speaker
Rather, they heard about those tunnels or they saw some maps or plans which they interpreted as showing tunnels they couldn't access.
00:10:44
Speaker
So there's a whole raft of statements that actually aren't particularly good evidence for a hidden tunnel complex because they could be cases of people who are being pranked by their fellows on North Head.
00:10:58
Speaker
or people who saw plans they didn't quite understand, or once again, because many of these memories are 30 years old, remember or misremember maps or plans in a way that makes them now think there were additional tunnels, rather than going, well, I saw a map and don't really recall it particularly well, and it did look slightly odd, but...
Problems with Witness Statements
00:11:21
Speaker
that's problem number two.
00:11:24
Speaker
And problem number three is that some of these statements are remarkably inconsistent with other statements in the set. As we'll probably spend quite some time on, there are two retired ladies who tell a story about the tunnel complex.
00:11:46
Speaker
in a way which seems inconsistent with the idea the tunnel complex was ever hidden from the public. And it does astound me that these two statements have survived all three editions of the book.
00:12:05
Speaker
Because even the most jaded reader who thinks that the military is up to no good and the government cannot be trusted is going to read those statements and go, yeah, well, that can't be true.
00:12:18
Speaker
That just sounds really weird, but we'll get to them shortly. We will. ah Yeah, I mean, we'll see. this the There is inconsistency in in the detail. you know lots Lots of people saying that there are secret tunnels, but the details of the tunnels, some people will say there are four levels of secret tunnels. Some people will say there are seven levels of secret tunnels.
00:12:38
Speaker
these Yeah, even though he may have a whole lot of people saying the same thing, In in in and broad strokes, when you look at the detail, there is a whole lot of inconsistency.
00:12:50
Speaker
But tongue so, yeah, if if if you've got the if you've got the bigger picture of this, you take us through the lot. I've got my copy of the book open to chapter du eight in front of me so I can read along with you and chime in as necessary.
00:13:02
Speaker
Okay, so we'll spend some time on some of these statements and probably skip over a another. The first statement comes from Desmond Horak. horror Horep?
00:13:14
Speaker
That's one of those names. Yeah. So we have a retired soldier, the statement was given the 12th day of July 1999, referring to the fact that Horep spent some time on North Head in about 1954. I'm not great but and appeared to be a forty five year time difference there, which is pretty big.
00:13:44
Speaker
And this is the first statement we're given. It's a very lengthy statement. And Desmond only knows about the fact that there are plans that he saw which suggests a tunnel complex, that there's a blocked off cave in Torpedo Yard, which he's curious about, and then an argument which is going to come up ever so slightly in the future, although it's not actually a big argument in Butler's argument for the existence of hidden tunnels in North Head, which is that the North Head installation does
00:14:24
Speaker
doesn't resemble similar installations found in Australia. Now, this was a really big thing that Earnshaw and John Smith used to push, which is that if you compare Fort Courtley with similar forts built at the same time, Fort Courtley is missing particular structures, particularly with regard to the guns on North Head.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so they have argued that look this is evidence that something has been hidden because those structures would have been built by the Victorians and the fact that they're no longer accessible means that they've been blocked off Dave Wirt and Co, so the historians who have looked into the building of North Head over the course of the 19th and 20th century, argue that the thing which these people ignore is that Fort Courtley was built in the cheapest way possible.
00:15:23
Speaker
So some of those features we find in Australian forts and also in similar fortifications in the United Kingdom. were built with a lot more money than Fort Courtley was.
00:15:35
Speaker
So of course the reason why these features are missing is not because they've been hidden or made to disappear, but rather for the sheer fact that it was a very cheap fort built at the end of the world and a part of the empire that the United Kingdom really wasn't all that interested in any anymore.
00:15:56
Speaker
Now, this one does mention Torpedo Yard right at the end. I want something that we'll see. Yeah, that's the blocked-off cave. Blocked-up cave. yeah There was a cave entrance that has these days been blocked up and was apparently very large and had railway lines running into it. So we'll see that a bit more.
00:16:12
Speaker
but um So that's that's the statement of Desmond Harrop. What's next? Then we get Stuart Raymond Brydon. which that makes me think I should do a small man in a box impression there, but I'm not going to.
00:16:28
Speaker
This is once again a statement which is 30 years old. This is a case of someone who claims to have seen the tunnels, but we have a 30-year time gap between the seeing of the tunnels and the presentation of the of the evidence there.
00:16:46
Speaker
So yes, happy. It does claim to have been in the tunnels, but once again, we do have this reliability of memory issue given there's 30 years between let's say the vision, that seems like the wrong term to yours, between seeing the tunnels and then reporting on them to jo John Lewis.
00:17:05
Speaker
See, I want to say again, Jerm, John Earnshaw. It's just a bit named Strog. It's cute. It's Strog. So this one ah this this one gives some some sort of facts and figures, measurements. It talks about a room that was 40 to 50 feet high, full of crates. um It also refers to a labyrinth of tunnels under North Head, not all of which he visited initially.
00:17:31
Speaker
Now, I've said this before, i i have no head for distances and measurements at all. If you told me something was 20 feet high or 40 feet high, would believe you because the numbers just don't mean anything to me. But I accept that that's not everyone's experience. So maybe person could accurately recall the dimensions of a room 30 to 40 years later. But...
00:17:55
Speaker
but um i can I can understand why a person might doubt it, especially as they talk about things like the fact that when you're underground, especially in low light, that can do wonky things to you to your perception of spaces and and distances and what have you.
00:18:10
Speaker
So, yeah, don't don't don't quite know what to think about that. Well, next on list is Peter George S. Richardson. And this one fascinates me because the statement is actually consistent with the Nguyen tunnel complex, mostly because his description of what he saw...
00:18:27
Speaker
is a bit vague and he's concerned about there being ah about there being kind of a covered section and there were covered walkways on north head back when it was a military fortification it was a heavily camouflaged hillside because it was a defensive fort and thus didn't want people to be able to see things from both the land or the sea So this is one of these statements you go, I don't think this actually tells us anything interesting at all, unless you are assuming that if there's a difference between how North Head looks now, this is how it looked 30 years ago, then that has to be because things have been hidden, as opposed to, no, this is just a badly described, I remember being on North Head when I was a young man story.
00:19:20
Speaker
Although it does say we made several excursions into the tunnels and on one occasion we came out of a shaft in someone's garden, which is the makings of a crude sexual innuendo, but I'm classy and I'm not going to make it.
00:19:30
Speaker
It's true. and It's true. You are a very, very classy person who doesn't even know what a single entendre would be. No. No, I don't. So, moving on! Mr Howard.
00:19:42
Speaker
Kenneth Frederick Howard, to you. ah so this is a one where someone has seen what they claim to be maps of the fortification, but never saw the tunnels themselves.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yes. Plans had a cross-section of North Head. There are about five or six different levels of tunnels running off in different dimensions. ah directions rather. There were also many large rooms and chambers in the complex and numerous deep ventilation shafts. The whole, here we go, the whole place is a honeycomb of tunnels.
00:20:15
Speaker
So this is possibly one of the ones that Judge Elias was like, okay, well, that's just, that's just, that they're that that's hyperbole. We're not going to take that one seriously. Yeah. And the next statement by Percy Douglas Neville is basically the same.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yes, very short. As is the statement by David Richard Breasting. yeah So again, ah maps and tunnels showing a picture supposedly showing a complex with multiple levels of tunnels in it, but no no and no um direct experience of them.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. So now we move on to... Sorry, was going to say i Vernon. ah It's Vernon John Rawl. The statement started with I, Vernon John Rawl. So for a moment there, I thought their first name was I, in the same way that my first name is M. That is not inconceivable. But yes, Vernon John Rawl.
00:21:04
Speaker
This is once again a 40 year gap between the claim and the statutory declaration. And this one's curious because the way it's written seems suggest that he both did and did not explore the tunnels.
00:21:19
Speaker
Quite a detailed one, this one. It it it has yeah section here and
Plausibility of Blocked Caves
00:21:24
Speaker
all sorts. But this is where I think we get into the curious question as to what I take to be the most plausible part of the tale here.
00:21:34
Speaker
So one consistent bit of testimony amongst a lot of these statements, particularly by the service personnel who worked at the fort, is is that there was a blocked up cave in Torpedo Yard.
00:21:50
Speaker
And that, to my mind, probably is the most plausible part of the tale, that there was a cave of some kind in Torpedo Yard, which was noticed by large numbers of people during their service at Torpedo Yard that has at some point been but being blocked off and maybe lost.
00:22:12
Speaker
That seems to be a consistent story in quite a lot of these tales here. And we'll probably talk more about that later on in our in our review.
00:22:24
Speaker
But yeah, this is a's long statement. It's detailed and yet also at the same time does seem to suggest they both did and did not explore the tunnels. Yes, and now here we get... So i they talked about some people they thought possibly but because they were already involved with the idea that there are these secret tunnels and had been talking about it amongst themselves and may have... um that may have coloured their recollections. But this one... Well, just read the the conclusion of this one. says, Today North Head is an attractive public recreational site. However, my impression is that is that it has been very cleverly sanitised...
00:23:00
Speaker
Land has been reprofiled, entrances obliterated, shafts and stairs skillfully disguised, vents and power cables removed. An amazing job has been done of removing evidence of some parts which I know existed.
00:23:11
Speaker
Whether or not it is now a tomb to some of the world's most precious early aircraft remains a mystery to me. Much of North Head's history is an enigma, but some knowledge of this remains held in the memories of people like myself who are stationed there. Sadly, it seems, the truth is hidden by official denials.
00:23:27
Speaker
So i mean that's quite interesting. It's like... not Not only are these not only are these the tunnel in entrances and what have you gone, did they they they've been so well hidden. there There's absolutely no trace of these things that I'm sure were there.
00:23:44
Speaker
So therefore that shows there must have been a particularly detailed sort of cover-up effort. It does sort of raise the stakes. Yeah, and we get similar story by Alan Reginald Doherty, who also tells a very similar story to that of Vernon John Rawl.
00:24:05
Speaker
And that this one also has a great concluding paragraph. I'm now a high priest and a member in good standing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have been a member of this church for the last 21 years.
00:24:17
Speaker
I suspect that it's meant to be a a statement of the generosity and veracity of his character. Character, yes. there is Another thing that I do see a lot, including this guy's one, is the talk of ventilation shafts.
00:24:33
Speaker
um which have come up a bunch of times before. so I do wonder if it's possible that that is a thing, like like the cave and torpedo yard, that may have been... um that certainly seems plausible that something like that could have been around and maybe not be there anymore.
00:24:49
Speaker
But now we have Mrs. Robinson. Who's Mrs. Robinson? Yes, a woman. A woman. Joan Matilda Robinson. Is that even allowed? Well, I mean, apparently so.
00:25:00
Speaker
I mean, we jest, but there's actually, I think it's really only about the statement of three women in this set of 25 26 statutory declarations here. etcly satatory declarations here so This is the case of the wife of a service member who worked at North Head.
00:25:20
Speaker
And as a mother, had several children who also explored North Head during their time growing up in Davenport.
00:25:30
Speaker
And because they were naughty children, they regularly got lost, so she had to go and hunt for those children on North Head, presumably playing the greatest sport humankind has ever done.
00:25:42
Speaker
has ever so it ever designed and she claims to have been well that's too although which version of the most dangerous game are we thinking of the one with with with ice tea i see i think the one with bruce willis ah no that's not no the one with ice tea and it's got mitka howa in it doesn't it who else is in that one it's not called the dangerous game it's called something else surviving the game I don't know.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think was surviving the game. Anyway, she claims to have been into rooms where the planes were on display.
00:26:17
Speaker
So this one is interesting. Yeah, yeah So, in one of these big rooms, I saw floats which were off a plane, as they still had the struts which be attached to the plane. The children thought they were canoes.
00:26:29
Speaker
The floats were beside some large crates about the size of railway wagons. I did see one engine, which I knew to be an aircraft engine, It was a very old type. You could see where the propeller would be attached.
00:26:41
Speaker
I knew it was an aircraft engine because my father, who was in the ah RAF, worked for many years on these types of old planes. It was also a future large. You could see the frame with canvas or that type of material covering it.
00:26:53
Speaker
i know it was a plane that would land on water. Now, this is a problem... because Butler has already admitted that the Boeings were likely stripped of their fabric before they were shipped over because they were in such deleterious condition.
00:27:13
Speaker
And yet apparently they're now sitting in a tunnel complex in North Head, recovered. So at some point they decided these old plans that were not serviceable nor were they in any sense useful should at least be recovered in canvas when they're put on display inside North Head.
00:27:33
Speaker
Rutger Hauer and Gary Busey. And John C. McGillie in it as well. i need to go back and watch that film again. It's a great one. 1994. the same time, the investigation into North Head was clearing up. Coincidence?
00:27:46
Speaker
Don't see how it can be. I mean, this date was made in October 1995. Maybe she had just watched it on VHS. Food. Probably.
00:27:58
Speaker
This statement also mentions the ammunition, which of course is going to be the big story at the end of this book.
Shift from Aircraft to Ammunition
00:28:06
Speaker
Because by the end of the book, the planes really stop being important.
00:28:10
Speaker
The ammunition becomes the preeminent reason as to why there is a hidden and tunnel complex, or at least a tunnel complex that cannot be accessed by the public. So we move on to Sidney James, little taxi operator.
00:28:25
Speaker
What's his deal? Yes. ah Well, once again, this is someone who has made a statement which doesn't really suggest the existence of hidden tunnels in that his statement does seem consistent with the known tunnel complex. It's more...
00:28:43
Speaker
It doesn't look the same to him now as it did back in the day. But it doesn't look the same now as it looked back in the day because everything has been stripped out of the tunnels. The doors have been removed.
00:28:57
Speaker
There's no camouflage anymore. The hillside does look different. That doesn't tell you that there are tunnels which are missing. Although, again, talk of the Torpedo Yard Depot with rail tracks going into a tunnel and what have you.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yes, and once again, I still think that's the most plausible part of this particular tale. So next we have Henry C. M. Brock, Chief Petty Officer, Royal New Zealand Navy.
00:29:23
Speaker
Now retired. Retired, and possibly by this time dead. This is another case of someone who didn't go into the tunnels, but was told about them.
00:29:35
Speaker
So... Whether that's good evidence for a tunnel complex or not depends on your judge of character and whether or not he was being pranked or trolled by his colleagues at the time.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yes, and now this one talks about five or six planes of the different levels from the top level going right down to ones at sea level. Interesting. Yeah, and that's a story where the plans or map...
00:30:04
Speaker
seem to change in number of pages quite radically from one witness to another, which does seem to suggest that maybe there were some plans that were several pages in length, but memory inflation has now gone, oh, if it's one page per level, and I've been told there are five or six lit levels, therefore it must be five or six pages.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yes, it's hard to know. So next is Dennis B. Powell, a member of the Navy. Again, one that at the time it was given was was over 30 years old.
00:30:44
Speaker
So yes, this a case of someone who claims to have been in an extensive tunnel complex, but there isn't much in the way of detail about the tunnels themselves, just that there is a tunnel complex that it was easy to get lost in.
00:31:01
Speaker
We have a very short one from Peter Hansen, which I see was given in 1991.
00:31:06
Speaker
ah So possibly that's an interview from Mr. Ensure or not. I'm not quite sure. But um basically it says tunnels existed. They were big. um And it finishes, the tunnels that are open to the public are only a fraction of what lies beneath North Head. I know that North Head is a maze of tunnels.
00:31:21
Speaker
So there we go again with the um inflation, i guess. But now, now. and actually, I saw point out. Quite a lot of these statements have this feature of, I went into a tunnel and it was scary.
00:31:35
Speaker
Tunnels are scary? No, no they're not. Tunnels are delightful places that people should spend more time in. And that's not because I'm trying to lure lure people to their death.
00:31:46
Speaker
Enjoy the tunnels. No. But yeah know yeah now now we get to the big one. Thelma D. Bell. What does Thelma have to say? i mean, it's almost feels we should just read this one out. because i dont you should I think maybe you should. I don't think any way to summarise this and do it due justice. So, Thelma D. Bell, do solemnly sincerely declare that...
00:32:13
Speaker
About 20 years ago, i and a group of senior citizens went on a bus trip to North Head and Devonport. It would have been just before my husband died in 1978, because I remember telling him all about the trip when I got home.
00:32:27
Speaker
We had our club rooms in Queen's Arcade, and the bus we hired for the day picked us up from there. The bus drove through the North Head main gate at the bottom of the hill, and parked on a flat area where we all got out.
00:32:39
Speaker
We were made into two groups each, with a guide who was waiting for us at North Head. A short distance from the bus, they took us through an entrance like a garage door. They went into quite a big room.
00:32:51
Speaker
From here, each group went in separate directions through the tunnels, which started off being quite narrow and was one of the reasons why we went in separate groups. Some of the tunnels had electric lighting, but others didn't, and we had to use our torches.
00:33:06
Speaker
Quite some time later, we ran into the other group. There must have been a wider passage because they managed to get past us and we continued on. While going through the tunnels, we came across three or four workmen who told us they were sealing off the tunnels because the ammunition that was stored down there was starting to leak and was getting very dangerous.
00:33:27
Speaker
We were showing some of the rooms that had the ammunition in it. Some was in boxes and some was lying around on the floor. There was a lot of it, and some was quite big. We were told by the workmen and the guides that we were about to be the last group allowed into the tunnels.
00:33:44
Speaker
The guides knew all about the tunnels because they had taken other people on trips before, apparently. There were lots of rooms, and we tried poking our noses in each door that was open.
00:33:56
Speaker
Some had things in them, and some didn't. One quite big room did have large wooden cases in it. The aeroplane that I saw was in this great big room, just sitting there like it was ready to fly.
00:34:08
Speaker
It looked exactly the same as in the picture I sent to Pat Booth. It had wings at the bottom, and one at the top exactly as that photo. Some of us walked around it, and the guide did give us quite a history about the plane.
00:34:22
Speaker
I remember standing right up to it and saying, what a beautiful plane, and having to lock it away like that. I asked why it couldn't be put in a museum at Western Springs, and was told that they were not allowed to remove it.
00:34:35
Speaker
I seem to remember the plane was a darkish color, but there wasn't much light in the room, so it might have been lighter. The guide also gave us a history about the ammunition, but I can't remember what he said about either the plane or the ammunition. um We had gone through quite a few passages and down a few stairs before we came to the plane.
00:34:55
Speaker
We entered the tunnels at about 10.30 in the morning, and when we emerged from the top, we would have been underground for little over two hours. We went through many tunnels and up and down a lot of stairs, and my word, some of them were steep and narrow.
00:35:09
Speaker
Some had handrails, while others didn't. It was so nice to come out of the tunnels to see daylight. We all flopped on the grass at the top to get our breath back and had to wait for the others before going to the tea rooms in Devonport for lunch.
00:35:22
Speaker
There were at least 40 or more of us on this trip. They were mostly women, but a few men came along too. A lot of my friends who were with us on this day, including my sister, have since died.
00:35:35
Speaker
Most of us were in our 60s and early 70s at the time. It makes me so mad when people write and say there is nothing there, because I definitely saw it, and I know for a fact there's ammunition and an airplane there.
00:35:48
Speaker
I would swear on the Bible. I thought before I die, i will just jolly well have my say about it, and I have. Declared at Takapuna this 15th day of May, 1998. nineteen ninety eight So, i mean, that's that's that's everything. That's secret tunnels, that's people people telling them that that they were being sealed because there was ammunition in them, and a whole plane.
Surprising Corroboration of Aircraft in Tunnels
00:36:13
Speaker
A whole plane sitting there. But Josh, this statement is is corroborated. Well, that's the thing. So, I mean, you read that and think, like okay that this is much too good to be true. Much too good to be true. Especially because at no point up until now have they ever talked about a full aeroplane being stored anywhere in North Head. It's always disassembled planes, stored packed in crates and parts of them everywhere. This one's on display.
00:36:37
Speaker
So the whole thing... just sounds completely off. And yet I guess the reason why Mr. Butler decided to include it is because there's then another one that says largely the same thing.
00:36:48
Speaker
so I guess he figures the two corroborate. Well, Josh, I think it's your it's your turn to do to do a live reading now. because so let me just... Yep, I'm just checking the details. Now that is very, very similar story. So this is now the the statement of Evelyn Nichols given on the 26th, so less than two weeks after after Mrs Bell.
00:37:11
Speaker
ah So Evelyn Nichols do solemnly and sincerely declare that I used to belong to a club in Auckland that was a group of senior New Zealand senior citizens with club rooms and Queen's Arcade. Same as the previous one.
00:37:22
Speaker
About 20 years ago, we went on a bus trip to Devonport and went to North Head where we were taken through the tunnels by guides. I would have been in my late 50s at the time and was probably one of the youngest in the group. Most of the others were in their 60s and older.
00:37:35
Speaker
The guides that took us through the tunnels had something to do with North Head and said they had taken tours through before. They were waiting for us when we got there and divided us up into two parties. I was in charge of our party and the guide led the way.
00:37:47
Speaker
i was at the back of the group to make sure no one was left behind. The entrance doors to the tunnels were quite wide and they seemed to close in. The main tunnel went straight ahead and it was quite wide, but the narrow ones went off it. Often in the narrow tunnels, we hung on to the clothing of the person in front.
00:38:01
Speaker
We came to quite a lot of stairs and I know one part of them was steep. Where we came across the quote unquote chappies was in a wide tunnel and on one side of it was where they were working. I think we surprised them because they couldn't have known that we were going to come through.
00:38:14
Speaker
They had lights hanging down where working and they stopped when they saw us. I think we really surprised them. The late Frank Barnes, our group leader and organiser of the trip, spoke to the workmen and told them that we had permission to be there. We didn't continue on. We were told to go back the way we came, and of course we went through different tunnels, up and downstairs, but we certainly certainly didn't go through all the tunnels.
00:38:32
Speaker
The big room was lower down where we saw the aeroplane and was a long way in. It was right inside North Head. I stood by the doorway to the room while others were inside for a closer look. The plane was quite small. It would have been about 20 feet long, and I think it was painted a dark grey colour.
00:38:46
Speaker
It wasn't a single wing plane, it had double wings, but it wasn't streamlined like the ones are now, it was an old timer. Also in this big room with the plane were some very large packing cases. We stayed in the tunnels for quite some time, it was dark except for the time we bumped into the workmen, dim lighting may have also been in the big room where the plane was.
00:39:02
Speaker
The rest of the time the tunnels were only lit with the torches that the guides and some of us brought along. When we came out at the top in daylight, it took your eyes a while to sort out the scenery. We walked back to the bus and drove to Devonport for lunch, which had already been booked for about 12.30. The thing that sticks in my mind about the trip is seeing the aeroplane. I don't know what the plane was, only that I saw an aeroplane right inside North Head.
00:39:21
Speaker
When you're in a big group and at the back you don't hear or what was being said and know what was going on, maybe someone said what the plane was. It's a pity Frank Barnes isn't still alive, I'm sure he would have known what it was. He did walk in this 26th day of April 1998. So, I mean, that's two people saying largely the same thing. and yet the thing that they're both saying... Josh, this statement... Yeah. This statement suggests a lot of people have been through the tunnels and seen the planes. Oh, no, a guided tour. tour.
00:39:55
Speaker
And there have been many such tours prior, according to the Bell story. So there are differences between Bell and Nichols here. Nichols doesn't mention the ammunition at all.
00:40:14
Speaker
She doesn't also mention the multiple tour groups. That's a feature of the Bell version. No, she did. she does She did at the start say they were divided up us in two parties. No, no, she did say that.
00:40:26
Speaker
But yes, so we have we have two quite interesting stories here. We have planes which are sitting on display, so not packed away.
00:40:37
Speaker
We have tour guides which are showing people these planes. anded our the Ah! About to call him Earnshaw.
00:40:48
Speaker
Butler says, It was these last descriptions of fully assembled aircraft sitting in tunnels that satisfied Judge Elias that their statements in entirety were tricks of memories. Which i have to say, you're right.
00:41:02
Speaker
It does seem ever so slightly weird. mean, there is no discussion here as to whether Evelyn or Thelma knew one another, but they both appear to have been on the same... Part of the same group here.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yes, although... Part of the same group? Part of the same tour, not necessarily. Yeah. I mean, it's the same starting from Queen's Arcade getting a bus. Yeah, it could even be if if they happened at different times.
00:41:30
Speaker
So now i think I think from the sounds of it, our chapter eights diverge at this point because I don't have the comment from Martin Butler in addition one.
00:41:40
Speaker
And also, the the next one I have is the statement of Mr. Taylor, which according to your list doesn't appear until a little bit after. So it looks like he may have done a little bit of A little bit of changing things around from version to version.
00:41:54
Speaker
So we you you you take the lead and I'll see how my one matches up. Stanley Furnell, and this is another claim of someone who heard about tunnels but never actually went into them.
00:42:09
Speaker
Then we get a statement by Arthur C. Kilmore, and this is once again a fairly vague statement, of someone who has walked through tunnels that don't seem to resemble the ones that exist on North Head. Now, he does a statement with there should be old maps held by the Historical Society showing all these old tunnels and admittedly, the fact there are missing maps or plans for the North Head complex is a bit of an awkward part of the story but the Kilmore Statement itself doesn't really tell us anything about whether there are tunnels there or not.
00:42:50
Speaker
We get a very short statement by Ralph Cooper. who claims that there were locked tunnels on North Head. Doesn't actually seem to suggest that there are any tunnels which are missing, so it just seems very vague, and it doesn't seem to support any particular contention.
00:43:10
Speaker
And then as we approach the Taylor Statement, we get the statement of James Frank Blackburn, retired. And this is once again another vague story of...
00:43:22
Speaker
There are tunnels. I remember them being different. There are entrances I can't find anymore. This suggests the existence of a hidden tunnel complex.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, see, that i'm I'm flipping through these things, and they're in a different order from this point on And i don't think...
00:43:47
Speaker
Do I see Mr. Blackburn? I see is Mr. Kilmore.
Doubts About Civilian Access to Military Complex
00:43:51
Speaker
Hobson. There's a Mr. Hobson in this one. ah It's an interview between Alan Hobson and John Inshaw and others.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yes, I don't know. didn't actually make much of a note. of that one yeah that would double yeah I guess that was an interview more than a statutory declaration so yeah I don't i don't have the um the Blackburn one here at all in this in this edition but I do have the Taylor one which is the next one on your list I see yes Barry Thomas Taylor diesel mechanic so his is quite a long quite a detailed one yeah The biggest point about this one is that the claim is the tunnel system went into the basement of a house on private property, which means that there was someone living in Davenport who had a house which had access to a military complex.
00:44:49
Speaker
So you would think that would be the kind of thing that people would have talked about. Oh yes, sir Mr. Addison, I believe you've got a a basement in your house that leads to a hidden tunnel complex filled with planes and and ammunition.
00:45:02
Speaker
Oh yes, it's ah one of the many benefits of owning a house in Devonport, having access to tunnel complexes via the basement. It does say, i remember hearing the conversation and movements of the house occupants, and i'm quite convinced that the premises were occupied by military personnel,
00:45:19
Speaker
as we never ventured far enough from the entry shaft to be beyond the boundaries of the military complex. So maybe by house, they don't necessarily mean a civilian house, but it does it does finish up, though.
00:45:32
Speaker
i know beyond any doubt that an underground complex of vast proportions exists below the present publicly accessible tunnels near the surface of North Head. I cannot believe that the Navy nor the Department of Conservation does not know about the six or seven levels and that the hill is a honeycomb of passages and rooms.
00:45:51
Speaker
So again, I assume that's that's the sort of one that um Judge Elias just wrote off as being... exaggeration or tall tale or something. Yeah. So then we move on to Ian William Reed, manager.
00:46:05
Speaker
And this is another example of one where I'm not entirely sure how the statement is inconsistent with the existing tunnel. Yeah. complex.
00:46:16
Speaker
I mean, North Head has changed over time, and nothing about this is necessarily inconsistent. It's more of a case of he remembers getting from point A to point B in one way, and doesn't think and get to point A to point B the same way now, but that could just be a trick of memory.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yes, um I have a few and in my edition is in a couple of of extracts of news articles from short times advertising the in in ista But um when the next statutory declaration I have is full of a Rodney Ernest Ord forestry contractor Yes, and this it mentions the mushroom farm the much okay tell me about the mushroom farm So there was at one stage a plan to grow mushrooms in the tunnels of North Head. So that actually is something which did occur. And so, yeah, this is a statement which mentions that farm.
00:47:13
Speaker
i mean, mushrooms grow well in the dark. That's why I don't like mushrooms. Mushrooms are the batmen of the fungal world. that i I'm going to assume that makes sense not investigate any further.
00:47:25
Speaker
Precisely. This one says he would describe the tunnels at North Head as like a rabbit warren. So again, it's fairly strong. This would also mention the huge magazines both full of weeping cordite that was in rolls about a foot thick and two foot six to three foot long.
00:47:43
Speaker
The door to one of these magazines was very heavy and creaked as I pulled it open. It was painted red and had danger written on it. Fortunately, I realized what it was I had seen, I was very careful not to cause a spark or anything because there was an awful lot of cordite in there.
00:47:59
Speaker
Oh, Yes, as it was further on, something should be done with a massive amount of explosives that i've seen in there because it was pretty volatile and dangerous. The fact that it shouldn't be there and the government should be responsible for it now. ah Not just the army or the navy as it has been there for a long time now. The government should take responsibility for it and have it removed.
00:48:18
Speaker
Which I do agree, if there is discarded ammunition inside North Head, then that definitely should occur. The question is whether there is discarded ammunition in North Head. So then we move on to David. So from the looks of things, we're moving more into the ammunition bit of it now. the next We are, yes. It does seem to be great in the way that we we move more and more. And I actually do wonder whether that's why the Bell and Nichols statements occur. Because the Bell statement...
00:48:47
Speaker
makes the claim that there's a lot of ammunition and it's just scattered all over the floor, which is a fairly dangerous thing to do if you're letting members of the public just wander through your hidden tunnel complex.
00:49:01
Speaker
e ah But yes, so David Graham Stewart declares that, well, he was serving in the Navy, similar thing, basically explored tunnels, saw a whole lot of um large caliber shells stacked in racks from floor to ceiling, hundreds of rounds,
00:49:16
Speaker
um We move on to John Fleming Frame, ah who enlisted in the army at Christchurch in February and then came up to North Head. And again, this is one of the ones, he's he's served in a bunch of different places, so possibly this is one of the ones that...
00:49:32
Speaker
ah Judge Elias thought would possibly though a confusing one fort for another ah but he says that yes North Head wasn't only a coastal fort it was also the main ammunition storage depot for the northern military district during the second world war and actually there there are two additional statements in the second and third edition which is C.D. Coulson and Eric Peter Voysen.
00:49:54
Speaker
The Coulson statement, i actually have no comment on whatsoever, it just seems to be very much the same as other statements we've seen. The Eric Peter Voysen one is curious because a he doesn't see any of these hidden tunnels, and B, he's told there's a map, but also hasn't seen that as well.
00:50:16
Speaker
So he's been told there are tunnels and has been told there is a map. That doesn't seem like a particularly useful statutory declaration. good So then, okay, you took it again now now i'm I'm in the section. i've I've got to the bits that you've already mentioned previously.
00:50:35
Speaker
so i think I think I'm at the end of it. You've got one about someone frame. I did not have that in this is a a former member of the army, and his big beef is that Major Knutsford, who was the army major who was responsible for closing down the army occupation of North Head and disposing of the ammunition correctly, has denied the claim there are hidden tunnels here.
00:51:12
Speaker
So he says, the people who would know much more about North here than I do are the coastal gunners who are stationed there. Names like Tom Power, George Salt, George Salt, Fred Chambers, Jack Callagher, Nifty Coal, Red Nutsford, and Alan Hobson to name but a few.
00:51:33
Speaker
There is certainly another tunnel system under North Head, the entrances to which have been sealed and therefore no longer apparent. To deny that it exists is ridiculous, particularly by those who are much more knowledgeable about North Head than I am.
00:51:47
Speaker
I get very annoyed when the tunnels that I went through and know to be there are dismissed as hearsay and rumour. So... We've been at this for getting close to an hour, and that's that's that's all that that is all of the witness testimony that Mr. Butler chose to include in this book.
00:52:06
Speaker
And certainly some of it sounds too good to be true. But as as you say, there are a few sort of common threads there. So ah in in my edition of it, he basically concludes by saying, okay, like the the official version of fence that there there is no stored ammunition, there's no no aircraft, nothing like that, all rests upon the fact that the DOC investigation found no hidden tunnels.
00:52:32
Speaker
um He says, but so basically if if if any one if some one were to find ah hidden tunnel well then that would sort of blow everything away and who knows then and in then disguiseised the learnt he says ah therefore if just one forgotten tunnel were to be discovered today the courage conviction and integrity of those who came forward would be re-validated this in itself even if no aircraft has been discovered ah considered a worthwhile outcome and reason to continue my search and so he decides he needs to go back to torpedo yard So my next chapter is chapter nine, Return to the Torpedo Yard. But I gather that your edition sticks stick a couple of little things in between.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yes, there is some additional evidence, as chapter nine is called. But I think if we kind of look at the totality of what's been discussed in chapter eight, I mean, this is what...
00:53:25
Speaker
Butler says, in totality, what they say is not vague or random, and there are consistent themes that can be extracted from each story. Now, I would say many of the statutory declarations are vague.
00:53:41
Speaker
So that is a problem for the set of evidence there. And it is true there are consistent themes that can be extracted from each story, but often those consistent themes need to be seen through a particular lens in that you have to be discarding some evidence and then go, well, you know,
00:54:04
Speaker
Evelyn and Thelma, they can't be right about the planes being on display. And they're probably wrong about their being guided tours for a hidden tunnel complex, but they do talk about the ammunition.
00:54:18
Speaker
There's our consistent theme. And so it does seem often that what... Earnshaw was doing and Butler is doing now is cherry-picking the bits of evidence that support the thesis there are hidden tunnels under North Head was what Judge Elias was doing was looking at the evidence in total and going this is a gabbled mess that doesn't really tell you anything useful And the bit which kind of comes into clear focus here is that Judge Elias points out in her ruling that Earnshaw probably influenced a large number of these statutory declarations.
00:55:06
Speaker
Now, Butler says this is ridiculous to think that Earnshaw influenced these people and their testimony. And it is true that the stories of Hidden Tunnels predated John Earnshaw.
00:55:21
Speaker
But the way that John Earnshaw interviewed people badgered people when he was elisting statements from them did involve asking leading questions and berating witnesses when they disagreed with claims by other witnesses, which means that by the time these statutory declarations are introduced to the court,
00:55:44
Speaker
there is a worry that Earnshaw has influenced these recollections. And this is not to say that Earnshaw did this deliberately. It just sounds like Earnshaw got easily irritated by people when they were giving statements that didn't accord with his own particular view and would correct or badge your witness and say, well, what you meant this, or surely actually that's inconsistent, what you should have said was.
00:56:10
Speaker
And so that is a good reason to go, look, even... if these people did sincerely believe they saw tunnels, the way these stories have been elicited from them makes them prima facie suspicious.
Bias and Completeness of Evidence
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah. Now, one thing we haven't seen anything of um is witness statements from people who disagree with this whole thing.
00:56:38
Speaker
um Certainly that from reading from reading this this book, the impression you get is that you've sort of got you've got experts on one side who are sort of who who who talk about the theory of it all, and and and according to our investigations and our our archaeological research and what have have you, that that that supposedly shows that there weren't or couldn't have been any tunnels there. But then on the other side, you've got people who said, no, no, we saw them with our own two damn eyes.
00:57:08
Speaker
As though, you know, implying that, well, you can you can theorize and and talk about research all you want, but that doesn't beat actual human beings who witness this for real.
00:57:23
Speaker
But there is no... Apart, I guess, from Salt Jr. and Salt Sr., there isn't any mention of witness testimony of people saying, yes, I served at this fort, I went all the way around it, there were no other tunnels. And yet I gather that sort of witness statement did actually exist?
00:57:40
Speaker
Yes, I mean, there were people who, when these stories were being litigated through the media, would come forward and say, well, yeah, served on North Head, and frankly...
00:57:52
Speaker
I don't believe there are any additional tunnels on the head. Earnshaw created a packet of if evidence of people who agreed with his thesis.
00:58:03
Speaker
And so we have a base rate issue here. A lot of people served on North Head. only some of them believe there were hidden tunnels on north head and most of their stories of these hidden tunnels on north head occur decades after their time serving there so there is a worry that maybe those stories have been influenced by time ah bad recollection faulty memories and the like there are a lot of witnesses who came forward to say look
00:58:34
Speaker
I worked there. There are no hidden tunnel complexes on on the head. So even if you do have, in this case, 26 statutory declarations,
00:58:47
Speaker
You do have to wonder, what about all the other people who weren't there? Where are their statements? Now, of course, a conspiracy theorist might say, well, those people are scared to speak up about what they saw.
00:59:00
Speaker
But a lot of people were willing to state on the record, no, there's nothing more to this than you can say. That said... When you read through all of this, I can i can see where Mr Butler is coming from.
00:59:15
Speaker
You read through all this stuff and it's like, well, okay, sure yet some of it's clearly exaggeration, some of it just can't be true, but just the volume, it feels like a where there's smoke, there's fire sort of a thing. It's like there must be something, surely, surely.
00:59:31
Speaker
to to generate this volume of stuff people saying even though the details may be different generally the same thing that there are these secret tunnels that they really truly walked through many years ago like i can I can understand how a person could find this convincing Oh, yeah, no, it's... But I think people find it convincing because they don't think about what's missing from the pool of evidence there. Because it does look like it's a big pool of evidence. I mean, Earnshaw had a lot more statements at his disposal for the court case.
01:00:09
Speaker
But... Just because you've got a whole bunch of statements doesn't tell you there's any veracity to those statements. What you need is physical evidence, and that that is what Butler going to try to find next.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yes. So, shall we do one more chapter and then maybe call it a day and save the rest for for part three, the the return of the Jedi? Okay.
Historical Gaps and Tunnel Construction
01:00:36
Speaker
One more chapter. One more chapter before bed. One more chapter before bed. So in the second and third edition of the book, chapter nine is called additional evidence. I think in your version of the book, additional evidence actually does occur, but at a latter point in the text.
01:00:56
Speaker
There's a a short, yeah, so chapter nine of my book Return to the Torpedo Yard, and then my chapter 10 is just called the additional evidence. It's quite short. Yeah, and some of this will overlap. So when we talk about chapter, your chapter 10, not my chapter 10, my chapter 10 is a completely different chapter.
01:01:13
Speaker
chapter, we'll have to negotiate our way through it. But in the second and third edition, chapter chapter two ah chapter nine is called Additional Evidence.
01:01:24
Speaker
And it starts with five separate investigations failed to find a single forgotten tunnel entrance at North Head or the Torpedo Yard. That signifies that either the tunnels do not exist or there was a deliberate cover-up and a conspiracy to hide them.
01:01:42
Speaker
Now, my first thought on this was actually this is not an exclusive dilemma here. It might just be in they haven't been found, so they could be missing rather than hidden.
01:01:53
Speaker
But, of course, Butler is operating under the thesis that if you don't find a tunnel, They a have been hidden from view and be also it turns out the authorities deny that these tunnels exist So actually you can get your exclusive dilemma out out of this his big issue in this chapter is that Mitchell, Dave Mitchell, who was the first person to write the report on North Head, and then Dave Vert, who did the archaeological investigations, are kind of at odds, at least apparently, about whether there's any period of time where major construction could have occurred on or in North Head.
01:02:38
Speaker
So Mitchell, by and large, says, well, look there's really no period of time which isn't unaccounted for. Wirt says actually there is a bit of time at the beginning of the 20th century where actually maybe some construction could have occurred.
01:02:53
Speaker
Butler takes this to be a disagreement between two scholars here. i'd see this more as by the time Wirt is doing his work he has more access to the historical material and thus is actually much more aware of where the record is vague as opposed to where the record is quite so solid and continuous. it's not quite the disagreement that Butler makes it out to be.
01:03:22
Speaker
And also Butler is hinging a lot of his argument on here that if there's a gap in the historical record that means major earthworks could have been made during that time, which is a bit of a stretch. The fact that you might have a gap in the historical record doesn't tell you much about what's occurring in that gap unless you're already making assumptions as to what occurred during that time.
01:03:53
Speaker
He's really fixated in this particular... Oh, yes. Yeah, this... I think there's some of this in my chapter nine. And yes, it's ah the when he talks about the the idea that there was a convict labour force available from certain ah periods to others um and draws this conclusion that, yes, it is possible there was this gap of time here, which also we also when this convict labour force was available. So that means it is possible that these tunnels could have been done during the time that that we don't have records for, which I know is... is
01:04:25
Speaker
the exact opposite of the conclusion of the inquiry, which was that there was never a time when there was both a need for work to be done and labour force that was available to do it.
01:04:37
Speaker
Yes, he is very fixated on the idea that 40 convicts that were employed in the region at the time could have built a vast tunnel complex inside of North Head.
01:04:49
Speaker
Although I do think it's interesting that 40 felons then never talked about building a giant hidden tunnel complex inside of North Head. You could kind of understand if the complex had been made by military personnel who would be sworn to secrecy.
01:05:07
Speaker
But the stereotype of the convicted labourer doesn't really fit the idea of them then signing the Official Secrets Act. Why is no one talked about this if 40 convicts built a large tunnel complex in North Head at the time?
01:05:25
Speaker
Possibly the best argument he's got here is that both Wirt and Mitchell claim that there's no major construction of a tunnel building type that's going on at the end of the 19th century.
01:05:42
Speaker
or the beginning of the 20th century. And Butler does have his smoking sewer here, and that there is a sewer tunnel that runs along the coastline from Torpedo Yard all the way to the naval base proper in Devonport.
01:06:01
Speaker
And that sewer tunnel was built underground in 1899. So it does seem that there were some major earthworks that were being done at the end of the 19th century, which is kind of glossed over by both Mitchell and Wirt.
01:06:21
Speaker
They don't seem to talk about the sewer tunnel here. And Butler is right say, well, look, if they're able to build the sewer line, then what else could they have been building?
01:06:33
Speaker
They obviously have the ability to tunnel, So what else did they dig at the time? Although a sewer tunnel and a tunnel complex are quite different things. The sewer line is a straight line, essentially it goes along the coastline between torpedo yard and the na naval base. It's quite small, so you can crawl through it, but you can't really walk through it.
01:06:58
Speaker
A tunnel complex would be a much larger proposition. And once again, just because we have a sewer tunnel built at a time that's not accounted for by the initial evidence, doesn't itself tell us that this is a good argument for a hidden tunnel complex being built at a around about the same time?
01:07:20
Speaker
Yes, and certainly there's the whole question of the extent of all this. Going back to the witness statements from the last chapter, maybe maybe Maybe your convict workforce would have had the time to build some tunnels, but to to have a comp you know have a labyrinth, an underground city, to to have North Head honeycombed with tunnels, doesn't really sound like he's talking about the sort of labour force that could have done that at any time, really.
01:07:51
Speaker
So again, there's a bit of a bit of a bit of tension in the the discrepancies between exactly but between how people describe the system of tunnels that they claim was there.
01:08:06
Speaker
The other thing he focuses on are anomalies in the historical record. So there is an engine room which is described by contemporary documents which cannot be found.
01:08:22
Speaker
And some of the batteries are described in a way which doesn't fit the way the batteries look now. So this either suggests that these features gone missing over time or even deliberately been concealed from the public or conversely they were badly described at the time. So one of the theories about the missing engine room is that it was a room that was going to be built, was talked about in a future tense, but was then never actually built.
01:08:57
Speaker
So it creates the impression an engine room was built and has gone missing, qua has been hidden. But it's also quite possible that the engine room was talked about as a feature they were going to build, then they never built it.
01:09:12
Speaker
But no one ever went back in time went, oh, you should probably amend that record there to talk about the room we're about to build, which we're not going to build now. But Butler's theory requires these descriptions be accurate and true,
01:09:25
Speaker
even though, we talked about with the previous chapter, he's going to dispute any account by service personnel who happen to disagree with him about the existence of these missing features.
01:09:37
Speaker
Yes, that is a bit of a... Yeah, it comes back to that a bunch of times. He's willing to take take take it at surface value, the statements of people who say the things that he wants to be true, but anyone who says something opposed to that... He'll either discount or go over with a fine-toothed code looking for any sort of anomaly, which he does not do with the the statements that he likes.
01:10:02
Speaker
He also does a bit of what I think is Bible code argumentation adjacent reasoning. so there's a section in the historical record where they talk about a miner's store,
01:10:18
Speaker
and Then later on in the same paragraph they talk about a store for mines and Butler takes it that because they talk about the miners store and Then they talk about a store for mine These can't be the same thing a miner's store can't be the same thing as a store for mines Otherwise, why wouldn't they have referred to? The miners store is the miners store or the store for mines as the store for mines and And frankly, this kind of argumentation, I think, can get in the sea.
01:10:51
Speaker
The fact that someone might describe the miners' store as a store for mines doesn't tell you that they're talking about two discrete locations. They might just be using the English language in a versatile and wonderful way and going, well, I mean, I caught the miners' store before, so now say it's a store for mines.
01:11:10
Speaker
Yes, especially as a person who has written a book, he must know how often the the um the temptation or the the yeah the the feeling that Using the same phrase over and over again sounds a bit dumb and you like to add some variety to it.
01:11:26
Speaker
um What's the one about bananas? there's ah There's a famous thing, and we newspapers take this to a ridiculous degree, referring to bananas as curved yellow fruit or something simply because they didn't want to use the word banana over and over again.
01:11:44
Speaker
But, yeah, certainly using using variation in phrasing, that's That's the thing people do all the time. That being said, there is something really interesting in this check chapter, and this is the purported discovery of observation post-G.
Possible Location of Missing Observation Post G
01:12:05
Speaker
Yes, I think this this came up previously, i think, or maybe it will come up later. I can't remember. I've heard the story, though. They they found... He saw in the tunnels what he thought where there should have been an observation post.
01:12:20
Speaker
It's in your chapter 10. Oh, it's my chapter 10. There we go. Okay. So, yes, the um looking looking ah for another possible entrance to this this this tunnel complex, he thought there there used to be an observation post and the in in North Head back when mines were going to be strung across the harbour.
01:12:43
Speaker
He works out where the soldier observation post would have been realises it's now in private property. Talks to the owners of the property who say that, yes, when they were working on it, there was they found what they thought was a concrete water tank buried there, but it sounds like this was the concrete observation post, but that it has since been destroyed.
01:13:05
Speaker
That was about all it said. What comes up in the second edition? So actually, so let me get to the second edition here because the it is it does have a kind of sinister nature to it.
01:13:18
Speaker
So according to Butler, when he discovers what he takes to be the location of Observation Post G, He said,
01:13:31
Speaker
there was hitherto unknown doc answered that question the doc response was there's only one minefield observation post or direction finding post and it is the current one on dock north head reserve clearly marked on the dock chart the only other position that was previously located the torpedoy yard at ground level a show On the 1896 plan of proposed alterations to torpedo yard, that was not required when the observation post was built at North Head itself.
01:14:01
Speaker
going to look, the official record says this post was never built, but he discovers something which he takes to be the observation post. And so he gains the owner's assistance to access the site and finds a corroded six feet or two meter length of single core copper wire sheafed in steel wire rope.
01:14:23
Speaker
And directly below this location and embedded in the cliff, there were four core copper wires that were also discovered, which he takes to be consistent with the operating mechanism for the minefield.
01:14:39
Speaker
So Doc get told about the existence of this potential post and they describe it as a concrete gravity water tank.
01:14:52
Speaker
And Dave Vert is then called to investigate and quoting Butler, "...after a brief look, he then told the property owner, without referral to the Historic Places Trust, that it was of no historical significance and left the property, thereby allowing the owners to destroy the structure." Whilst the evidence shows the structure to be the missing second observation post G on the chart, as is it as it has now been destroyed, its actual location is largely academic.
01:15:24
Speaker
And as the property owner is reluctant to allow a ground radar survey, all roads now lead back to Rome, or in this case, the Torpedo Yard, as the alternative access point for the tunnel to observation post G. So it all sounds very conspiratorial.
01:15:41
Speaker
It does. Yeah, that the the first edition didn't say anything about Dave Vurt, as I recall. So the so yeah i basically just said, yeah, they found it and it had been destroyed.
01:15:53
Speaker
And didn't mention that like someone had come and said he does avoid using Dave's name. He simply says the chief archae ah archaeologist, who also happened to be the chief investigator.
01:16:08
Speaker
So he's he's not saying Dave Vird, but he is also going, it's the same guy, you've heard of him before. Yeah. But yes, at any rate, there's none of that in the first edition, as I recall. It's simply, yeah, they they had found a thing and they'd since destroyed it, but no detail about about anyone having told them specifically that it wasn't historically important and they could destroy it.
01:16:31
Speaker
So that's interesting. So where do we... yeah so there is a It's very conspiratorial overtone to this chapter chapter, which admittedly, if you do think that Doc is involved in a cover-up, this is precisely what you'd expect them to do.
01:16:48
Speaker
So i think i I think we've reached a good time to um bring this episode to a close. any what's in Anything else before we break for a third episode?
01:16:59
Speaker
Well, I mean, so basically the summary of this chapter is that A... The 40 convicts who were stationed around North Head in the early part of the 20th century could have created more tunnels because there is a archival gap where potentially a large amount of earthworks could have been done if there was any desire to do it. And there's no argument as to why they would desire to do it other than the fact that they could.
01:17:31
Speaker
His second prong of the argument is, look, actually North Head is easy to tunnel into because it's welded scoria, so it's actually very easy to make tunnels without much need of structural support.
01:17:43
Speaker
His third prong of the argument is I found observation point G, which is the gravity tank on private land. And the final point, which is the absence of evidence, is evidence of absence.
01:17:57
Speaker
The fact the records don't record the existence of these tunnels does not mean the tunnels do not exist. So there's a gap. They could have been built, therefore probably they were built.
01:18:10
Speaker
Yes, that's something in in the chapters that I've seen. and there's a lot of There's no evidence stuff was built, just it's possible that they, well not even it's possible, it's not impossible that they could have been built, which I think i think the best you can say is,
01:18:28
Speaker
Some of the experts did seem to say, no, it's not possible that any anything could have been built. And he says, well, no, no, no, that's not true. It is possible that something could have been built, but that that that's it as far as I can see. There's no, certainly not probable, certainly not, we have reason to believe. It's just we can't discount, we we we can't say that that's completely impossible and write the whole thing off straight away.
01:18:55
Speaker
Indeed. so I think we're done. think we are. We should do a bonus episode that is traditional. ah We can talk about some stuff.
01:19:07
Speaker
We can talk about popes. We can talk about deaths that don't appear to be mysterious at all. We can talk about Shakespeare. We can talk about AI, not necessarily having to make reference to articles hosted on Substack.
01:19:19
Speaker
because I have been hearing a bunch about AI in slightly conspicuous terms, all coming up in the last week. So we can do weve we've we we've done some we've done some AI hate before, haven't we? We can we can hate a little bit more, I'm sure.
01:19:33
Speaker
So if you want to hear our hateful voice. I refuse to engage in AI hate. I am definitely not an AI. course not. So if you want to hear our hateful bonus episode, you just need to be a patron, and you can be one by going to patreon.com and looking for the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. We're there. It's true. It's a thing that's real and everything.
01:19:53
Speaker
ah Or you can just not do that. It's a free world. And I like to rock around the free world. Good. So, we've come to the end of the episode. Again,
01:20:06
Speaker
still trying to find a decent catchphrase to go out on. So, um this week I'm just going to say, conspiracies, be away with you. And I'm going to say, it's time to badger the badger.
01:20:24
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip and another who was so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:20:38
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
01:21:05
Speaker
And remember, actually, I am your mum.