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Nestled in the quiet suburb of Mount Lawley just North of Perth there is a Masonic Hall built in 1928. It was designed by prolific Western Australian architect George Herbert Parry in an interwar ‘Beaux-Arts’ style. Parry was best known for his ecclesiastical work, but designed a number of iconic buildings in Western Australia. Of particular note is the Captain Stirling Hotel (The ‘Cap S’) and the ‘Soldiers Convalescent Home’ in the Perth Hills. The latter was designed in a ‘Dutch Cape’ style and modelled on ‘Groote Schuur’ the Capetown home of mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes.

The Masonic Hall is on Alma Road and during the Second World War it found a new purpose, as the 6th Fighter Sector Headquarters for the Royal Australian Airforce (RAAF) responsible for the air defence of Western Australia.

On the 3rd of March 1942 Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft operating out of Kupang, Timor attacked the Western Australian town of Broome. At the time the port was full of refugees who had fled the Japanese assault on the Dutch East Indies. One of the last aircraft out was a Dutch airlines Dakota DC-3 named the ‘Pelikaan’. It was piloted by a Russian Ace Captain Ivan ‘Turc’ Smirnoff, who unbeknownst to him carried a fortune in diamonds which originally were sent to Bandung from Amsterdam to avoid falling into Nazi hands. Now to avoid capture by the Japanese they were bound for the Commonwealth Bank in Australia.

Captain Smirnoff was approaching Broome, just as the Japanese attack force was departing and was attacked by Zero fighters and crash landed on a remote beach. The diamonds subsequently disappeared. This episode is an interview with Juliet Wills, Journalist and author of ‘The Diamond Dakota Mystery’ the amazing story of the missing Dutch diamonds and the 1942 Broome attack.

William Dampier was an English Pirate, author and explorer. He published numerous books including ‘A New Voyage Around the World (1697) which was a unique blend of adventure and natural history which made him a popular sensation. He was the first English person to explore the coast of Western Australia in the ship HMS Roebuck which was the first Royal Navy expedition solely dedicated to science and exploration.

The Monte Bello Islands have a unique place in Western Australian history. They form an archipelago lying approximately 130KM off the Pilbara coast and in the 1950s they were the site of 3 British nuclear weapons tests called ‘Operation Hurricane’ and ‘Mosaic.’