With the Fall of the Philippines in 1942, Fremantle, Western Australia became a defacto home of the United States Navy. As a consequence, it became the largest submarine base in the Southern hemisphere supporting US war patrols, personnel, infrastructure and ships. Now where would you expect the US Navy to keep one of their largest ammunition depots filled with explosives, mines, torpedoes. Fremantle? Cottlesloe? Swanbourne? How about Northam.
Northam is about 100km from the coast and a 90 minutes drive from the Port of Fremantle. It was the site of a large Australian Army camp for the training and mobilisation of troops and was the birthplace of three Western Australian Imperial Force battalions 2/11th, 2/16th, and 2/28th. It also housed interned persons and nearly 4000 Italian Prisoners of War prior to their repatriation to Italy. There were plans to use Northam as an evacuation point in the event of an invasion of Perth, it was well suited with its distance from the coast, proximity to rail and logistical infrastructure such as storage tanks for aviation fuel were installed with this in mind.
During WW2 as mentioned the US Navy also had a presence there. They needed a secure and remote location to store weapons and explosives with good road and rail access. Springhill about 8km outside of Northam was deemed suitable because the Australian military already had fuel and weapons storage in the area. Previously 202 hectares of farmland was compulsorily acquired and developed as the ‘Australian Army Central Ammunition Depot’ (CAD) designated ‘6 CAD’ for Western Australia. Near there land was allocated for what was to become the 7 Naval Ammunition Depot (7 NAD) one of three Naval Ammunition Depots developed across Australia to support operations in the South West Pacific. the other two at Mount Coot-tha, near Brisbane designated Navy 134 and at Newington, Sydney (Navy 135). At Springhill, storage was constructed to supply ammunition to warships and in particular MKXIV torpedoes for submarines of the US 7th Fleet conducting their war patrols from Fremantle…..
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(Images courtesy of History Online, The Us Naval Institute & the Naval History Magazine)
