The ABC has a fascinating story of the Noel Butlin Archives at ANU which is built into the space we know of as the Parkes Way tunnel:
More than 30 years ago a hidden bunker was constructed above the Parkes Way tunnel on the Australian National University (ANU) campus.
ANU archivist Maggie Shapley says the two-storey structure disguised inside the hill includes the Noel Butlin Archives Centre.
“There’s 20 kilometres of records in that structure so that is certainly something to think about when you are driving through,” she said.
“It might look like a very utilitarian building but it in fact holds some of Australia’s historic treasures.”
HiddenDragon said :
So not a secret, in fact, that there is actually a little book about it:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dOXzq8I0L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Saw the book the other day on the local history shelf in one of Canberra’s remaining bookshops (which is not in a tunnel, as it happens….):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cantys-Bookshop/169200606711
Masquara said :
More an accident of planning than anything. It’s not a bunker and never was, that’s just someone’s attempt to make a dry story eye catching. Which is surprising, since the story of the tunnel is actually quite complex and interesting.
The whole project was the 1970s equivalent of the GDE fight.
NCDC saw traffic becoming an issue and wanted to build a western distribution road and city ring road, the former to be called Molonglo Freeway.
Meanwhile the ANU was making it’s own plans for the area that incorporated the NCDC’s proposed roads and expanded on them. Their planning involved the (current) Acton Tunnel, plus two others, another arterial tunnel (near the Shine Dome), and a longer campus tunnel that was to make the campus virtually vehicle free. At some point the Commonwealth gave some land back to the ANU’s lease so it extended right down to near the Hospital. That gave ANU control of the land where the Acton tunnel would be and the ANU Council approved it.
No idea what happened to the other proposed works, but only the Acton Tunnel went ahead, after a lot of heated debate. The freeway was argued as unnecessary and there were environmental concerns over the remodelling of the lake foreshore needed to carry a six lane road plus lake side road. There were concerns the ANU might pull approval, particular since ANU academics and students groups were opposing their pristine grounds being carved up for cars instead of public transport. Had ANU pulled support, a Parliamentary Committee would have had to adjudicate the dispute between two parts of the Commonwealth.
The tunnel went ahead, they cut out 210,000m3 of fill from Acton Ridge, which they used to remodel the lake and Sullies for the roadway. During construction they established that the space between the tunnel roof and the former top of the ridge would be suitable for two levels of storage space, which the ANU estimated could hold 300 vehicles. And so for a time it was intended to be a carpark with a bit of storage.
Priorities changed over the following couple of years and the ANU hired an architect to make the tunnel into archive space instead, given the Archives of Business and Labor were poorly stored in the HC Coombs Building. This lead to the tunnel’s cavity roof being nicknamed on campus the ‘cataCoombs’.
The ANU faced some problems though, calculations showed that the archived materials would be far heavier than the 300 cars originally intended. In fact part of the tunnel ceiling once collapsed due to fault welds in the beams so perhaps a good call.
Result was they couldn’t use the entire space for the archived materials. What space they could use, they estimated could only hold the collections expansion for another ten years, so through to 1990 basically on those original estimates.
The ANU then put natural landscaping over the top of the tunnel to reblend it with the ridge.
NickD said :
I’m pretty sure it was a case of taking advantage of the infrastructure that was being built already. Presumably it was a Commonwealth project to build the road and the tunnel, and it involved resuming ANU land, so it would have not been much of a hassle negotiation-wise to allow a hefty stone/concrete construction already happening to be dual-puposed as an ANU archive bunker.
Primal said :
Nope, that’s the Anthrax lab.
Leaving aside the not-very-interesting topic of the ANU chucking out a bunch of publications over a decade ago, does anyone know why the archives are housed in an underground tunnel? Was it purpose-built for this purpose? (it seems too shallow to have been much use as an actual bunker/air raid shelter, despite looking a lot like one).
p1 said :
Yes – as I said, a handful of ackers rescued most of the good material, so most of the good stuff was not “tossed out”. But it is still a travesty that private individuals had to take charge of it all. Did I mention a pile of Australia rail records going back to the early 19th century, with the names and addresses of every railway worker, health records, and the reasons they left their jobs – largely wars? I’ve done a search on the current Noel Butlin Archives holdings, and several of the items that were lost absolutely would have warranted a presence among the “treasures” – but they aren’t even in the catalogue. e.g. I doubt whether the Japanese/Indigenous pearl diver evidence transcript is in any other collection, nor other evidence transcripts where the authorities were sorting out squatter matters. The fact that I can list so many items that I saw in the Coombs archive, but haven’t made it into the collection, means that the process was not a matter of de-accessioning duplicate items or stuff of little value. Definite revisionism on the part of the Archives. Well, anyone would be embarrassed about allowing that to happen!
did several summers of casual work in the ANU library work when I was an undergrad in the late 90’s. During this time I tossed out (to be pulped, shredded, recycled, etc) quite a number of metres of publications. As far as I know the stuff we tossed were all none specific periodicals on tax and law from mid last century – no one will miss them, and they are certainly in the national library.
But having seen the inconsistency on the way things were done, I do believe these stories to be plausible.
Masquara said :
What? My humble pie? I never questioned anything, merely asked for a source from some one who constantly posts weird acusations with nothing to back them up.
And it appears your source is wrong, bud.
tonkatuff82 said :
It did happen – I personally saw the items I listed above, and they were all removed, mostly fortunately to private collections (hardly a “public good” solution). Items not rescued were disposed of.
Masquara said :
Actually I think you’d better have a slice yourself, that planned closure never happened due to an incredible effort by the staff of the time and the Friends of the Noel Butlin Archive Centre.
As to the alleged 1999 destruction unrelated to the Archive or its staff, I can’t comment other than to say it sounds like a beat up.
Source: my desk.
poetix said :
The ancient Egyptians seemed to have record keeping down pat…
http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/explore/main.html
HiddenDragon said :
Thanks for locating this – it looks as though the extraordinary and valuable collection I saw was already only the remnants! As it was probably two years after this posting that I was shown it. Criminals.
HiddenDragon said :
Comic and Gamer Nerd: here’s your humble pie.
Antagonist said :
Or not kept.
Primal said :
He wrote a story called ‘The Loaded Dog’, but I’ve never heard of ‘Missiles Under Lawson’.
HiddenDragon said :
The only existing stuffed Dodo (now a partial Dodo) was literally rescued from the flames of an incinerator well over a century ago under similar circumstances. There are examples of this kind of ignorance dating back for as long as historical records have been kept.
Masquara said :
Aside from having vague (and they are only that, and may be colouring my perceptions) recollection of this sad story, a quick perusal of the collection policy of the Butlin Archive lends weight to it (in terms of what was discarded), as does reference to easily googled tidbits such as these:
http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/asa//aus-archivists/msg02511.html
http://asslh.org.au/hummer/vol-2-no-9/noel-butlin/
I imagine there would be many similar stories, including in some public sector agencies which, unsurprisingly, seem to have a habit of forgetting all but the most recent past and repeating avoidable errors.
Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :
I’m not going to indulge a serial troll, sorry.
c_c™ said :
I thought the missiles were under Lawson???
Masquara: amazing but not extraordinary. Unfortunately history is littered with such examples of near horizon-ism.