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.”
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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.
Roundhead89 said :
Roundhead > flat Earth. Back to 2UE you go.
Primal said :
Get you’re facts straight, the bunker’s under Mt Ainslie. LBG is where they hid the Minutemen silo, why else would they have the West-German engineers design a dam that can drain the lake in less than 15mins?
HiddenDragon said :
Yes, it’s only the superbunker under LBG that they don’t like us mentioning…
Masquara said :
I agree, disgusting…if true.
Again, source?
Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :
The remains of the collection fitted in a dumpster only because a handful of academics had room in their libraries to accomodate a partial rescue. I can name two of the academics who rescued around 100 shelf metres of the material, but obviously don’t wish to without their permission. The ANU appears to have wiped the episode from their records. A distressed manager put out a call for the rescue (this was happening at the same time as the ANU got rid of the Coombs Building’s purpose built outdoor wooden furniture and replaced it with plastic). The range of material was amazing – eg the 1862 Census still wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string; state yearbooks going back to the 1860s; hundreds and hundreds of Commonwealth records including early water records; lists of property owners going back again to the 1850s; soldier settler allocation lists; property issue transcriptions; old maps; travelling stock route records and maps; economics journals (full sets); Indigenous records from state governments; early legislation bound in hide; court proceedings involving pearl diving in the Top End, including Japanese pearl divers’ testimony; WWII original documents around Defence funding. It was a very, very distressing matter and a savage loss, and I’m not surprised the ANU doesn’t like to recall it. This also occurred at the same time Sydney University slashed its library funding, so no doubt the resource was the casualty of a similar funding dispute – new managerialists versus the worthies. The worthies lost.
c_c™ said :
It was a big collection. An entire library – occupied three rooms at the Coombs building.
HipBookfairy said :
Yes – I think there have been other stories about it on the ABC or in the CT, so not exactly a highly classified national secret.
Mmmm…Was this built before or after the English holiday camps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlins
Perhaps there are ghostly cries of ‘Bingo’ and conga lines every night.
Thumper should investigate.
Masquara said :
You got a source on that?
c_c™ said :
It’s a pity they haven’t given their climate change records the same treatment and dumped the scientists who produced that drivel into that dumpster as well.
“Well it’s not so hidden now, is it.”
It was never intended to be actually hidden. It just happens to be where you can’t see it. The tunnel contains loads of valuable material that users can no longer consult in the library, but have to request for it to be brought out.
Masquara said :
If the entire economics history library fit ‘into a dumpster’ then it can’t have been that extensive a collection.
The ANU didn’t mention, did they that the ANU managers made the decision to put an entire economics history library (formed under the aegis of Noel Butlin, and with materials from the 1790s to the 1980s) into a dumpster in 1999? Hmmm, thought they wouldn’t. Not even scanned for posterity. Academics managed to rescue much of the archive for their personal libraries, but it was criminal behavior on the part of the ANU.
Well it’s not so hidden now, is it.
Thanks ABC.