Back in WW2 the Australian Army had a base in Nungarin… “Where the heck is Nungarin?” I here you say….. well its inland from Perth by about 3 – 4 hours, just about 40km north east of Merriden, far enough away that during WW2 any Japanese carrier born bombers wouldn’t reach it, but close enough that all the ordinance that was stored there would be able to be transported by rail or road to where it would be needed in case Western Australia was invaded. It was the biggest single ordinance store in western Australia and was in operation from 1942 right through to 1960’s when it was finally disbanded and sold off.
At its peak there would have been some 3000 to 4000 personnel onsite, along with a few hundred tanks and shells, ammunition, stores of all shapes and sizes and probably quite a few boxes of paperclips. All under the banner of 5 Base Ordnance Depot (5BOD)
At the end of the war most of the tanks and equipment was sold off with lots of farmers taking advantage of the tracked vehicles to clear land, trucks were in high demand and even the paperclips probably went for a song.
The saving grace, should it be so thought off, is that the service workshops, one of the biggest in the state was purchased by the shire for use as their works depot. Later when the shire got some funding a new depot was built and the building became a museum, run by the community by a great bunch of volunteers. Surrounding the museum and in the town are relics and remains of all the other infrastructure that the base consisted off. In the farmers paddocks are the remains of 5 huge warehouses (4000 square metres each) with the fire walls still standing.
The museum targets those items from the era of its operation, both military, civilian and agricultural, the collection includes several working examples of the type of vehicles that would have been around back in WW2. These include an M3 Halftrack, Universal carrier (Bren gun carrier), Stuart tank, Ferret scout car and a huge WW2 searchlight amongst them.
For those non army buffs, you can check out the tractor range, a collection of scary looking dolls, old 1940’s kitchen appliances, a local telephone exchange board that my Mother in law would have used. There is even the original “corner store: that was run by Aunty Jim (sound weird? well you will just have to go and read why she was called Aunty Jim) from the 1930’s right up until 2005 still using the original fittings and furnishings and one of those tills that would take your fingers off!
The good thing with this museum is they let you get up close and crawl around under over and inside the exhibits, so be prepared to get dirty, but it gives you a great experience of the conditions they would have put up with.
At least once a year they hold a vintage rally usually in March and occasionally have what they call a searchlight party where they take the searchlight out and fire it up, the beam can be seen at least 40km away.
The museum gets very little funding from the government, relying on lottery west grants and donations/fund raising. But for $10 entry its well worth your money
Overall I think the museum is well worth a visit if you are out this way, and it’s the only chance you’ll ever get to ride in a tank or halftrack when they have the vintage rally.
When I was a kid we had for a short time an actual Ferret scout car identical to the one here, and we used to go out to Wilga where there was an old tank, a Grant tank from WW2 in pretty bad condition from memory and I’m talking 1980 ish. It was nice to find out that the tank is currently in at the museum undergoing restoration, there is nothing but the hull, bottom turret and a few panels that have been sand blasted and painted primer white. Later I found the upper turret outside awaiting some work. So the trip to the museum being unplanned was a bit of a trip down memory lane back to my childhood.
If you’d like to know more you can click on the link below to go to their website
That Campervan Life 