• Title
  Item 21: Milton Kent aerial views of Chullora, Granville and unidentified Department of Housing, between 1935-1945
• Call number
  ON 447/Box 022
  
• Level of description
  item
• Date
  
  between 1935-1945
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Photographs
• Reference code
  960060
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  12 negatives - glass, gelatin silver - approximately 12 x 16.5 cm
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  During World War II, Chullora was selected as the site for a major wartime manufacturing plant. The site once occupied several hundred acres of land surrounded by Rookwood Cemetery, Brunker Road, the Hume Highway and Centenary Drive. The site was said to have been the largest secret manufacturing plant in Australia which was used for the production of military weapons, plane components, tanks, HE Bombs and ordnance. Over two-thousand men and woman were employed to work at the factory on a daily basis. During the war the factory produced components for 700 Beaufort, 380 Beau fighter and up to 50 Lincoln aircraft. Over 54 ACI tanks were built as well as 60 General Lee tanks that were adapted for use in the Australian Military, as were local jeeps in the 70s. The factory also produced 81 cupola turrets for the British Matilda tanks.
  
  An underground "bunker" and tunnel system is located on this site. It is directly under a block flats in Davidson Street and Marlene Crescent. The entrance to the "bunker" is by steel doors set in concrete into the hillside in a railway cutting which runs from alongside the railway line parallel to Marlene Crescent at a platform called the Railwelders and which leads under the block of flats. The doors to this "bunker" were welded up in the late 1980s. The steel doors are no longer visible, and the associated area has been back filled.
  
  Apart from the bunker, there is also a network of storage facilities that extend under the railway workshop. Sometime between 1977 to 1978 the steel access doors were fitted with locks (Railway SL type). The airshafts for this "bunker" are still clearly seen from the Hume Highway and some of them are within meters of the roadway. It has also been alleged that a tunnel approximately four miles long connects this complex with Bankstown Bunker, (RAAF headquarters during World War II) on the corner of Marion and Edgar Street Condell Park. Access to this network of storage facilities was from a steel door, bolted into the side of a stormwater drain which runs along the old RTA building in Chullora, it then runs under the Hume Hwy and eventually under the rail workshop.
  
  Reference:
  Article "Chullora, New South Wales" in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/ (accessed March 7, 2012)
• Scope and Content
  BOX 022
  
  CHULLORA
  1. Wartime secret manufacturing plant, Marlene Crescent, Chullora
  2. Wartime secret manufacturing plant, Marlene Crescent, Chullora
  3. Wartime secret manufacturing plant, Marlene Crescent, Chullora
  4. Wartime secret manufacturing plant, Marlene Crescent, Chullora
  
  GRANVILLE
  5. Australian Aluminium Co. and Australian Fertilizers
  6. Australian Aluminium Co. and Australian Fertilizers
  
  UNIDENTIFIED
  7. Housing estates and suburbs
  8. Housing estates and suburbs
  9. Housing estates and suburbs
  10. Housing estates and suburbs
  11. Housing estates and suburbs (Chiswick peninsula)
  12. Housing estates and suburbs
  
• System of arrangement
  Alphabetical by place
• Access Conditions
  
  Access via appointment
• Copying Conditions
  Copyright restrictions may apply: Photographs in this collection created before 1955 are all out of copyright. Photographs created after 1955 are in copyright.
  Copyright status:: This collection has multiple rights owners
  Rights and Restrictions Information:: Collection includes commissioned works
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Description source
  
  Titled on original box - label partly faded and damaged
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Original box label (see also Box 21):
  Australian Aluminium Co. (latest)
  ... aircraft ... Chullora [partly unreadable]
  Colgate Palmolive works
  [Department ?] of Housing
• Date note
  
  Dated from World War II
• Name
  New South Wales. Dept. of Local Government and Housing.
  
• Subject
  World War, 1939-1945--New South Wales--Sydney.
  
• Topic
  defence industry
  military & war structures & sites
  engineering works
  chemical factories
  aluminium factories
  public housing
  housing estates
  
• Place
  Chullora (N.S.W.)
  Australian Aluminium Co. Pty. Ltd. (Granville, N.S.W.)
  Chiswick (N.S.W.)
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE8805200

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