Chidlow WW2 Army Battalion Camp 4

Values

• The place provides an example of Western Australia’s change in strategic importance due to the entry of Japan into WW2.
• The place has the potential to provide valuable information about the lives of soldiers deployed to train and protect Western Australia during the latter part of WW2.
• The place provides the potential to identify and confirm the layout of such camps and whether they deviated from plans initially drawn by the Department of Defence.

Physical Description

The place comprises a combination of archaeological sites dating to WW2, bush reserve, residential housing, and land which is in the process of being cleared for development. Historical plans indicate that Chidlow WW2 Army Battalion Camp 4 comprised ablution blocks, kitchens, mess’, stores, a canteen, administration and communication buildings, various shelters and tenants, and drainage infrastructure. All structures have since been removed from the site leaving concrete foundations and archaeological material. It is also likely there will be buried refuse dating to the WW2 period, and information from the nominator suggests there were trenches and pits at the site which were backfilled, possibly with refuse.

History

The Mundaring area, including Chidlow, covers the traditional lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people, whose lands stretch from the coast, between Yanchep and Rockingham, to the Darling Scarp and Clackline in the east. The Whadjuk Noongar lived a nomadic hunter-gather lifestyle, with the name Mundaring believed to come from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a high place on a high place’ or ‘a place of the grass tree leaves’.
European settlement of the Mundaring area, which began in the 1840s with timber-cutting, quarries, orchards and small-scale farms, began to disrupt this way of life, which continued as settlement expanded into the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. The locality of Chidlow was established in 1883 around a well which had been sunk as early as the 1830s when the Northam Road was surveyed.

Creation Date

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Last Update

Disclaimer

This information is provided voluntarily as a public service. The information provided is made available in good faith and is derived from sources believed to be reliable and accurate. However, the information is provided solely on the basis that readers will be responsible for making their own assessment of the matters discussed herein and are advised to verify all relevant representations, statements and information.