The Hospital Under the Hill

In early 1942, news of the movements of Japanese Imperial forces caused considerable alarm for the people of North Queensland and northern Australia. On 19 February, the Australian mainland was directly threatened for the first time in the war. In a surprise attack on Darwin, 200 Japanese aircraft swept across the coast dropping bombs over the harbour and wharf; and then over the city itself, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind them.

Smoke billows from oil tanks, bombed during air raids on Darwin, 1942.
Photo: National Archives of Australia.

In Mount Isa, local authorities felt extremely vulnerable to an attack from Japan, and were certain that it was only a matter of time before a raid occurred there. The Mount Isa Hospital Board began formulating a plan to safeguard the patients and staff of the hospital in the event of an attack on Mount Isa. The Hospital’s Dr Ned Ryan approached Mount Isa Mines to garner support to construct an air raid shelter under the hill at the back of the hospital; with a view to fitting out the resultant tunnels as a functioning hospital.

Interior views of the restored Underground Hospital, 2022.
Photos: Trisha Fielding.

Mine management agreed to supply drills, compressors, tools, timber and explosives, though the Hospital Board would be required to pay for the explosives. (The Company was generous, but times were still tight — Mount Isa Mine had only just returned its first profit a few years earlier, in 1937). In addition to this support, the Company also promised that they would release Mine Foreman, Wally Onton, for a period of two weeks, to supervise the timbering and screening of the tunnels once they had been excavated.

One of two entrances to the Underground Hospital, 2022.
Photo: Trisha Fielding.

With the approval of Mount Isa Mines, Dr Ryan, together with Len Roles, Chairman of the Hospital Board, addressed a large gathering of miners as they went on— or came off— shift. They outlined their plan to excavate an air raid shelter in the hill behind the hospital. According to a Union Organiser, Mr Parker, who had been invited to be part of this delegation, it was impressed upon the men that the only way possible to build a suitable shelter was through their co-operation. And it was made clear that they would have to volunteer their labour. This meant that the work would have to be undertaken in their own time — after, or before — working their eight-hour shifts underground at the Mine. Mr Parker, quoted in The Worker in March 1942, said that “the men there and then agreed to give their wholehearted cooperation”.

Miners coming up from underground at the end of a shift, Mount Isa, c. 1935.
Photo: State Library of Queensland.

Keith Sue See was a mechanic with the Mine who looked after the compressors supplied by the Company for the construction of the Underground Hospital. He worked with Wally Onton, drilling, charging and firing the faces for the tunnels. In 2001, Mr Sue See recalled how Wally would tell him to “run like hell!” before the charges went off — when rocks, smoke and dust would come flying out of the tunnels. The miners coming off shift would muck out the drives ready for them to drill, charge and fire the next day. He noted that this work took “quite a few weeks”, and then after the mining was finished, the timbering was done, followed by the fitting out of all the cupboards, shelves, benches, beds/bunks, power and water. 

An E-shaped floor plan

Three parallel tunnels roughly 20
 metres long were driven into the face of the hill in an 
east-west alignment by drilling and blasting. A fourth
 tunnel, on a north-south alignment, connected the 
three parallels tunnels, which gave the air raid shelter
 an E-shaped floor plan. Internally, the underground 
hospital was timbered like a mine, using two different 
techniques. The north tunnel was heavily timbered 
with three-piece sets of sawn Oregon posts and caps 
24cm squared in sections, and top-lagged (ceiled)
 with hardwood planks resting on the caps. The rest
 of the shelter was lightly timbered with round logs of
 local Gidgyea timber — an extremely hard, heavy and
 durable wood. The walls of the tunnels were bare rock (a light-coloured shale) and the floor was left as bare earth. A narrow vertical shaft was placed at the end of the north tunnel, ostensibly for ventilation, but in the event of a bomb blast, could function as an escape route. 

Nurse Eileen Lister (later Richardson), stands next to the ladder at the foot of the ventilation shaft in the Underground Hospital, 1942.
Photo: MIMAG, December 1977.

The residents of Mount Isa must have felt at least a small sense of relief when their new air raid shelter was finished. Named the Onton Shelter, it was officially opened on 4 July 1942. It was lit by electricity and had been fitted out with an operating theatre, 32 bunks in two tiers, cots for children and cupboards for storage.

Entrance to Underground Hospital, Mount Isa, 2022.
Photo: Trisha Fielding.

Former Nurses recalled the Underground Hospital 

Alice Thatcher (nee Gralton) was a trainee nurse at the Mount Isa Hospital at the time the Onton Shelter was being built. In 1996, after she had heard that the Underground Hospital might be re- opened, she wrote to the Hospital Board noting that she remembered many practice drills. She stressed the importance senior hospital staff must have placed on those drills, writing: 

“The Air Raid siren would go off without any warning, sometimes at regular intervals; usually about once a week. We all knew what we had to do and if anything was forgotten we certainly never made the same mistake twice... Everything was checked regularly to make sure if needed there would be no hiccups. At the end of the first entrance there was a miniature theatre set up. Small sterilisers, dressings, instruments, sterilised linen, all in readiness if an emergency operation was needed. At the end of the third corridor an emergency Labour Ward was set up in the same way.” 

Eileen Richardson (nee Lister) was another nurse who worked at Mount Isa Hospital when the Underground Hospital was mined. In 1996, Mrs Richardson provided a detailed description of the internal fit-out of the shelter. There was a ventilation shaft and ladder in one corner of the back wall of the shelter. This was there in case the doors at the front of the tunnels had been damaged by a bomb blast and couldn’t be opened. 

Cupboards were stocked with first-aid packs, medicines, dressings, instruments needed for emergency operations, blankets, food and water. There was an operating table, complete with all the necessary equipment for administering anaesthetic; a steriliser, which was connected to electricity — but if that failed, could be heated using a primus stove. In the event of a fire, the shelter was equipped with cans of water, hoses, shovels and buckets of sand. 

A staged photograph, depicting hospital staff conducting a mock operation, in the operating theatre of the Underground Hospital, 1942.
L-R: Sr Dorothy Walsh, Matron Ida Glen, Dr Ned Ryan, Dr Reg Shortbridge. The 'patient' was Nurse Eileen Lister.
Photo: MIMAG, December 1977.

Mercifully, the Underground Hospital never had to be used for its intended purpose. Alice Thatcher recalls using it to catch a few hours’ rest between shifts. It was quiet, and the temperature inside the tunnels was (and still is) much cooler than the temperature outside. “During the Summer months we nurses, after working night duty, would sleep during the day in the shelter... It was our only way of escaping the heat,” Mrs Thatcher said.

“I’m glad we never had to use it as it was a long haul from the hospital to the shelter as we found out when we had air raid practices and had to take patients up on stretchers.” — Eileen Richardson

An entirely civilian initiative 

Unlike other speedily completed wartime infrastructure throughout North Queensland, such as roads and airfields, the military were not involved with the construction or the operation of Mount Isa’s Underground Hospital in any way. In his 1997 Conservation Strategy report, historian Dr Peter Bell stressed this point, writing: 

“The Mount Isa Underground Hospital was an entirely civilian initiative, involving only the District Hospital and Mount Isa Mines, and it was probably finished or very nearly so before the first American troops arrived in Mount Isa. Neither US nor Australian armies ever played any part in the running of the civilian hospital.” 

The Underground Hospital was a remarkable achievement. A shining example of community spirit. One scribe, known as Estee, writing in MIMAG in January 1948, neatly encapsulated the achievement, with this summary: 

“It stands as a monument to the men of Mount Isa; a monument to untiring effort; a monument to the unselfish spirit which prevailed at a time when no man knew what the next day held for Mount Isa, or for that matter Australia.”