Son Of Stretch Global Instigator

November 2006
V4:N11

DARWIN HIGH SCHOOL
SECRET TUNNELS EXPOSED

Rumors for years have been heard of 'secret tunnels' running under Darwin High School left over from World War 2. One ex student has even posted what he knows in The Torch. After many phone calls from our readers, we decided to contact one of those who had actually been in them when he was at school and ask him to join our SOSGI Investigative Team. SOSGI can now reveal more information after the investigation early in 2006, plus we have photos and video of our investigation and the actual tunnels we found!

I was taken by Artist-X to a section of the cliff at Darwin High in the early hours of the morning. Before he showed me, he explained that I had to promise to keep the actual entrance secret, just as he did when he was told. The knowledge of such a secret holds great responsibility he said to me. I instantly though was I in some cheap B grade kung fu movie?

He sat me down and said only a hand full of people have been told of the way to get in. I can only pass this information on to someone 3 times in my lifetime. The first time was to another Darwin High student when she was in year 12 and I had just hit 23. Then the second time was many years later when I told my daughter. This final time is to you. He also told me that he only knows around 12 people who knows of how to get in and 2 of those are from the MATB. I promised not to tell a sole of the actual way to get in and only tell 3 others during my lifetime.

We then went around the fence between the cliff edge and Darwin High property and he led me to a spot at the edge of the cliff and pointed down. "It's down here" he said. "We have to climb down. Don't worry it isn't too dangerous". I told him to lead the way, and he started climbing down the cliff face. I then followed. Around 3 metres down he shows me a bush and says it is behind this. It was a struggle to get between the bush and the cliff face, but as I wiggled between them there was a small depression behind the bushes that we could kneel. He pulled some rocks out of the cliff face and placed them next to him. As he moved them a small entrance was revealed. This is were we have to crawl in, he said to me, and then turned on his torch and went in sliding on his stomach. I watched him slowly enter and disappearing into the blackness. "Come on" he shouted to me and I followed.

Photo above is the entrance behind the bushes and rocks removed

I crawled, well slithered on my stomach for over 4 metres. The feeling was very claustrophobic. It was dark, except for my torch, it was damp, and insects everywhere. I was glad to reach the exit. Standing there was my guide and I looked around and saw a tunnel that went to my left and right. He helped me up. "it is a drainage pipe. the original entrance hasn't been found" He said to me. I shone the light down to my right and it went off into blackness. To my left. The same. Nothing. How far does it go? I asked him. Pointing to my right and shining his torch down it he told me that it was about 10 metres but it ends in a rock fall. "Best not go down there ever" he said. "Way too dangerous. Just walking down there makes it worse" he told me. Shining the light to my left he said "this way about 20 metres and there are 2 tunnels leading off it. Both going into the direction of the school. Come on, lets go". I follow Artist-X down the damp tunnel. The walls and the floor of the tunnel are concrete and about 2m wide and 2m high. He stops and we come to the first of the other tunnels. "This one runs nearly under the library and there are several doors running off it but they have been sealed by welding we assume after the war" he said. We carry on and reach a right angle turn. He tells me this tunnel runs to under the old water tank, and like the other tunnel, there are several doors leading off it but they are also sealed. He then smiles and tells me a door down the end is open. Welded open. Lets go. We walk past doors on our right which have all been welded shut.

Photo above is the tunnel (the light down the end is Artist-X
at the door that leads into a room.

We enter the room. I shine the torch around. The room is about 15 metres long and about 10 metres wide. I smile and see tables and chairs. But these are from Darwin High. I look and see a progressive age of the tables and chairs. From the 60's and 70's, and later. A blackboard has been painted on a wall and I look and see artwork of drawings and cartoons. Also visitors to this place have scrawled messages, slogans, thoughts on the walls.

Sam from 1965 had written (he or she) that the Vietnam war was just as wrong as the Korean war. Australia should not be involved in America's colonial grab for power.

Mary from 1979 wrote the best party of her life had been the one here!

1988 from a Bob who wrote that Australia was 200 years old.

I read and read. I could see a couple of cartoons from Artist-X and some great colorful graffiti style art. Other drawings littered the walls and roof. All this with the period furniture was like a time capsule. It was amazing. Just like opening a tomb in Egypt.

We spent an hour in the room. I read and looked at everything. He told me stories of what happened in here when he was at school and subsequence visits. It was about an hour later when my torch battery was dying and we decided it was time to leave.

Walking back to the exit, I asked him if anyone had tried to open any of the doors? "It has always been the thought that they were welded up for a reason. So leave them that way" he said. We get to the other tunnel now on my left. "Have a quick look down there" he said to me. I walked down and saw more doors on my left and right, and all had been welded shut. I got to the end, turned around and walked back. "Not much down there" he said when I got back. I agreed. We walked back to our exit point. I said to him I know now why the entrance to here was to remain secret. I went back into the tunnel and crawled through to the other end. He came out and then put the rocks back to hide the entrance.

I then squeezed between the bushes and the cliff face and climbed up. I check my small backpack with the video camera and digital camera. Artist-X climbs up soon after me and we walk next to the fence and around it and back to the car parked in the student car park. I thank him, get into my car and drive off to the airport to catch my plane back home.

On the plane I wrote this article while the experience was still fresh in my mind. I feel special as one of the holders of how to get into the tunnels. I still don't know what they were used for in World War 2. I do know there are more rooms and maybe even more tunnels. I wondered why no one had tried to get into any of the other rooms and what was in them. Seeing all the furniture took me back to when I was at school. There were messages from previous people who had come here and they shone a light on a little known piece of history of Darwin and the school. I did write a message on the wall and I drew a line from Artist-X's message to mine. Everyone has done that. Drawn a line from who brought them here to their message. What you see around these walls and roof is a flowchart of who had been here and with whom.

Will I ever tell anyone how to get in? I doubt I will ever be back in Darwin, so the secret is safe with me.

Sherlock & Artist-X
November 2006

Photo above shows approximately where the tunnels are under Darwin High School. Access point is not shown.

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GUY FAWKES DAY
5TH NOVEMBER

November 5th is known as "Bonfire Night" or "Guy Fawkes Night", and all over Britain people fire off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes. Guido Fawkes was an Englishman who, in popular legend, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder. He was caught, imprisoned, tortured on the rack, and finally executed, as we'll see.

400 years ago, Guy Fawkes was a co-conspirator in the "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 in England. He and his cohorts decided to blow up the both Houses of Parliament in London and kill King James I upon the inaugural opening of the Parliament, and succeeded in smuggling several barrels of gunpowder into the basement of the Parliament.

This "Gunpowder Plot" occurred two years after King James I (of the "King James Bible" fame) ascended to the throne. A group of English Catholics, of which Guido Fawkes was a member, decided to kill the King because it was felt he had reneged on his promises to stop the persecution of Catholics. To this day, it is the law in Britain that a Roman Catholic cannot hold the office of monarch. And the Queen is still Supreme Head of the Church of England.

The plot was foiled at the eleventh hour; some of the plotters escaped, some turned King's Evidence and reported on the rest. The unlucky Fawkes was taken in chains to the Tower of London. He was hanged, drawn and quartered. After Guy was hanged, he was torn asunder and drug through the streets of London behind a horse cart. The charge was treason, though some people in England prefer to remember Guy as "the only man ever to enter Parliament with honourable intentions."

To this day, one of the ceremonies that accompany the opening of a new session of parliament, is the searching of the basement, by a bunch of men in funny hats. Parliament somehow made political capital out of the close call, and poor Guy Fawkes is burned in effigy every November 5th on bonfires all over Britain.

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REMEMBERANCE DAY
11TH NOVEMBER

Remembrance Day (Australia, Canada, UK and Ireland), also known as Veteran's Day (USA), Poppy Day (South Africa), and Armistice Day (UK, New Zealand and many other Commonwealth countries; and the original name of the holiday internationally) is a day of commemoration observed in the Commonwealth of Nations, the United States of America, and various European and other countries (including France and Belgium) to commemorate the sacrifice of veterans and civilians in World War I and other wars.

It is observed on November 11 to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918.

The observance is specifically dedicated to members of the armed forces who were killed during war, and was created by King George V of the United Kingdom on November 7, 1919 possibly upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey though Wellesley Tudor Pole established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917.

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THANKSGIVING USA
NOVEMBER 2006

Following a nineteenth century tradition, most Americans believe that the first American Thanksgiving was a feast that took place on an unremembered date, sometime in the autumn of 1621, at Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts. In 1620, a group led by separatists from the Church of England, who were heading for Virginia, instead landed at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, on account of unforeseen wind and weather conditions. In the autumn of 1621, they celebrated a three-day harvest feast with the native Wampanoag people, without whom they would not have survived the winter of 1620.

This event was not viewed as a thanksgiving celebration at the time; the colony would not have a Thanksgiving observance until 1623 — and that was a religious observance rather than a feast.

The nineteenth century reinterpretation of the 1621 festival has since become a model for the U.S. version of Thanksgiving, but it was an established tradition before the popularization of the Pilgrim mythology.

It is now celebrated in North America (USA) on the 3rd Thursday of November.

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SOSGI RUMORED TO GO
WEEKLY NEXT YEAR '07

SOSGI is rumored to be going weekly in 2007. I asked the Editor Mr. Holmes for more information on this rumor and he told us that "the experiment of monthly issues was a success in both readership numbers (over 700,000 per month) and lowering costs, but it was decided that after many letters from readers, who have asked for more issues each month, and we are now researching how many can be done within the new framework, and we won't know how many until after Christmas".

So the scoop is, SOSGI will again increase the number of issues per year, but we wont know how many until January 2007.

We are again looking for reporters. Please send your story/news to sysadmin@sonofstretch.com. All stories are screened for quality and may not be used in SOSGI. All articles are submitted free of any charges for use.

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