Carnarvon commemorates Sydney discovery

By Carmelo Amalfi
On St Patrick's Day this year, WA solar farmer and taxation lawyer Lex Fullarton shared a quiet beer with his late father, Z Force commando and Carnarvon's longest serving public servant Robert Francis, or "Bob" to his friends and family.
It was the 11th anniversary of his dad's death and the day Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the discovery of HMAS Sydney off Shark Bay.
For Lex, it was a day to celebrate and commemorate.
Lex says "Bob" never stopped talking about the day German survivors of the Sydney battle landed on the coast in lifeboats, having later taking leave without pay from Carnarvon's harbour and lights department to go on suicide missions in the South West Pacific.
He says Carnarvon played an important yet largely unrecognised role in the HMAS Sydney story in the days and weeks following the naval disaster on November 19, 1941.
That role extends to the discovery last week of the Sydney and Kormoran wrecks.
He says Carnarvon was drawn into the wartime mystery after members of the rifle club, including his father, acting as emergency reservists under the Defence Act of 1908, rounded up the German survivors of HSK Kormoran at Red Bluff and 17-Mile Well.
His 19-year-old father was in the armed posse sent to Red Bluff.
Their orders were to guard the eyewitnesses to Sydney's disappearance until military authorities arrived to truck survivors south to be interrogated in Perth and later the eastern States until their repatriation to Germany after the war.
"The Germans were found in good shape, killing a sheep at Quobba station," Lex said exclusively for this blogsite.
The Kormoran survivors landed in two lifeboats, those landing at Red Bluff apologising to late Quobba station owner Keith Baston for killing one of his sheep for food.
They were taken into custody by local police sergeant Stan Anderson and Dr J.W. Piccles, who wanted to know why more guns were needed to bring in the German "aliens".
"What do you want more men for? You've got me," Dr Piccles tells Sgt Anderson, the 1941 exchange recorded by leading HMAS Sydney author Barbara Winter in her 1984 book on the ship's loss.
Lex said extra information about the 1941 beach confrontation emerged in 2001 when he met Kormoran survivor Fritz Englemann, who visited Carnarvon during the Fremantle Maritime Museum wreck seminar that laid the foundations for the search for and discovery last week of the Sydney and Kormoran wrecks.
Lex, 52, learnt from Fritz that a few Nazi Party members who came ashore wanted to overpower the Australians then make their way north, possibly rejoining other Kormoran survivors.
That is, until they ran into Bob and his ".303".
"My father started to raise his rifle but Arthur Snook, (of Gascoyne Trading which provided trucks to transport the POWs), spoke German and welcomed them to Australia. It was a bit of a stand-off, but Snook convinced them to give it up."
Lex said his father was a "dead eye", earning the reputation as one of the finest shots in the Australian army.
"He could shoot a target the size of a man's head from 1000 yards, every time."
Lex has kept his father's weapon, a rare 1908 British small arms rifle, firing it every year to signal the start of Carnarvon's Anzac Day commemorations.
Lex's family has lived in the Carnarvon area since 1885. He is the president of the RSL Club, bagpiper for weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs and is completing a PhD on taxation law at the University of New South Wales.
"Z Force" was the unofficial popular name given to Australia's Z Special Unit that operated behind enemy lines in the South West Pacific during World War Two.
Consisting of Australian, British and New Zealand units which trained around the country including Garden Island, it was the elite forerunner to the Australian SAS. They operated in many missions including a canoe raid on Singapore Harbour and contacting headhunters to help boost resistance against Japnese.forces.
Lex says people had to accept the fact that the Kormoran sank Sydney, aided by some bungling that allowed the German crew to catch Sydney off guard.
He says for those who still remember 1941, Sydney's sacrifice runs deep: "It's fairly certain that had the Sydney not intervened in Kormoran's plans (to lay mines in Carnarvon's harbour), my family would have been casualties, as all were engaged in shipping either as employees or passengers. Either way they would have been aboard one of the State Ships or other wool ships."
Winters, in HMAS Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, agrees: "He (Kormoan captain Theodor Detmers) would go to Shark Bay and leave some 'visiting cards' at the approaches to Carnarvon."
The Kormoran had more than 300 mines on board when it crossed paths with Sydney, their explosion after the battle forcing the Germans to abandon ship.
Most of the Kormoran reached Carnarvon's shores, the rest including Detmers were rescued at sea.
"We, the older community of Carnarvon that was around in 1941 and their descendents, (There are not many of them as the population was only about 300 in 1941) are eternally grateful to David Mearns and his crew for finally locating the ships And proving what we have been saying is true," he said.
"The media continues to ignore Carnarvon's role in the sinking of the Sydney by stating it was off the WA Coast and in some news reports still of the Mid West Coast. "It was off Carnarvon. To steal a man's property is a crime, to steal his name is abhorrent, to steal his honour is the lowest to which a person can sink."
"Dad couldn't be here physically to witness this but it is a nice touch that the finding of the HMAS Sydney was on the 11th anniversary of his death."



Lex's "Ode to the HMAS Sydney"

T'was Banjo who did wrote it, and to you I will quote it;
No foe shall gather our harvest, nor sit on our stock yard rail:
Now this is a tale of the ocean blue, of an Aussie vessel brave and true;
The HMAS Sydney and the boys that didn't fail:

T'was race day in Carnarvon and the sun was going down;
When the boys from HMAS Sydney were sailing passed our town:
Another job was over; they'd made another run;
When they chanced upon this bastard, called raider 41:

The enemy had travelled far to bring destruction here;
But they'd reckoned not on Sydney, and this would cost them dear:
They swung towards the setting sun; they made for it a chance to run;
They thought that they would sneak away, did Raider 41:

The sharp eyed crew of Sydney saw the Raiders flight;
They closed the gap; they knew they had a fight:
They'd fought before had every mothers son;
They thought that they would capture her, this Raider 41:

But the Germans were so clever they had a nasty plan;
She held their destruction did the bowels of Kormoran:
The cloak of her mystery she soon would throw aside;
As she thought to hammer Sydney with shell from side to side:

They set to work with grim profession; they knew their grisly task;
The Sydney, she would sail no more and home had seen them last:
"They've torn our bloody guts out, we'll never make it home;
We'll never see our loved ones or the seas again to roam";

The layer of the turret gave out an anguished cry;
Then we'll take this Bastard with us, cried the boys from turret Y:
They snatch another round; they mount to their six inch gun;
They target their tormentor, this Raider 41;

Their ears they are a bleeding, their muscles strain to lay;
Their shot must be a true one in the twilight of the day:
They aim her at his engine room, and there's a mighty crack;
And now these sons of Hitler will never journey back:

Now we'll leave them lying there, their souls have gone to rest;
There passing but a brief one and Carnarvon town was blessed;
Their lying out there somewhere, toward the setting sun;
The HMAS Sydney, her crew, and Raider 41.


Written by Lex for the 60th anniversary of the Sydney loss off Carnarvon in 1941. Lex is the son of one of the armed men who retrieved the Germans from Quobba station after the battle.