The Maitland Regional Museum has begun to unearth the forgotten stories of the World War I Tunnelling Corps with its latest exhibition.
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Museum director Janece McDonald said the strong turnout on the opening night, the diverse groups who had visited the exhibition and the exhibition’s success in unearthing untold history highlights the need for Maitland Regional Museum to be granted funding for its own space.
Currently the museum does not have its own designated building but instead relies on community spaces to host exhibitions in its name.
Dr McDonald said numerous descendents of tunnellers have attended the exhibition to tell and immortalise their ancestor’s stories. She told The Mercury the tale of a Cessnock man, a son of a tunneller, who was keen to shed light on his father’s experience in the corps.
“He was walking along, looking at the stories and photos, and pointed at one of the photos and said ‘Morris Whyburn was my father’s friend’.” she said.
“It turns out his father and Mr Whyburn had a couple of escapades together, including going AWOL together and having their pay docked.
“It was wonderful to see that story, that’s what this exhibition has been about.”
About 50 people turned out for the opening night of the tunnellers exhibition at Brough House on the weekend.
“Since then we’ve had plenty of visitors come through and we even had a group of teenagers come through and read the tunneller’s stories to one another,” she said.
The museum plans to record and present the stories in a digital format in the future.
Dr McDonald said the aim of the museum was to provide engaging, modern exhibitions that highlight the often obscured or buried Maitland contribution to history.
“We’re hoping, if we can present dedicated, local information in appetising, modern ways, we will be able to attract state and federal [government] funding for the 2018 Maitland bicentenary.”
The museum partnered with the Geological Survey of NSW and Friends of Grossmann House to produce the exhibition which focuses on the troops turning their geological expertise into an offensive weapon.
Hunter townships, with their highly trained coal mining populations, were targeted by recruiters who sought older men with engineering, geological and explosive expertise for their experimental unit.
Their missions on the Western front saw them tunnel beneath the salient to plant explosives and spy on the enemy by detecting their soundwaves through layers of rock with “geo-phones”.
The Geological Survey’s Chris Yeats recounted the history of the unit and harrowing challenges faced by the men to the guests who attended the opening night.
Dr Yeats closed his address with a message about the enduring relevance of geological warfare, which has its roots in the Hunter coal fields.
“By no means is tunnel warfare confined to the annals of history,” he said.
“Tunnel bomb attacks are commonplace in northern Syria, where rebels, coached by Hamas tunnellers from Gaza, are refining their craft as they fight the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
“This exhibition contains information, documents and artefacts that recount the first, but clearly not the last, significant application of mining and tunnelling to major warfare.”
The exhibition will be open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for the next two weekends. Entry is a gold coin donation.