Return to Nyrambla

On a crisp, cloudy winter morning in July 2015, people mingled in the gardens of Nyrambla. Many were in uniforms of various kinds: some were army, some navy, some were Australian, and some United States — a variety of services reminiscent of the mix of personnel who worked there seventy years before. Most of them were very young.

Caterers set up trellis tables along the driveway, covered them in tablecloths, and laid them with salmon sandwiches, scones, and coffee urns. The invitees arrived and took their places in the seats under a marquee. The front row was reserved for a small number of special guests: Australians who had worked for Central Bureau during the Second World War.

There were eleven of them: Helen Kenny (Garage Girl TypeX operator and supervisor); Colin Brackley (Kana operator with 1 Wireless Unit); Gordon Gibson (ASIPS with 51 Wireless Section, and also spent some time as a traffic analyst at Nyrambla); Bill Rogers (traffic analyst, and the son of the director of military intelligence, John Rogers); Frank Hughes (traffic analyst); Madeline Chidgey (TypeX operator); Diana Parker (Garage Girl); Clarrie Millar (of 3 Wireless Unit); Mac Jamieson (1 Wireless Unit); Dorothy Morrow (Central Bureau as well as the Australian Advanced Land headquarters on the University of Queensland campus); and Ross Gwyther (whose role in Central Bureau is not known). All aged over ninety, they were the stars of the event.

Other guests included spouses and children of Central Bureau people who had since died; local historian Peter Dunn; members of the Chermside historical society; and journalists. The Australian Signals Directorate had organised a plaque, commemorating Central Bureau, to be placed at the front gate of the house.

Steve Meekin, Australia’s deputy secretary for intelligence, stood at the front of the marquee and gave a speech in honour of the veterans of Central Bureau.

Central Bureau was first established in Melbourne. When MacArthur moved General HQ to Brisbane in September 1942, Central Bureau followed and set up operations at Nyrambla and the former fire station in Kitchener Road.

Depending on rank and service Central Bureau staff lived in camps at Chermside, Yeronga and at the racecourse. Others were billeted with local families.

But it was here that the Bureau really began to come into its own. In this house and the garages at the back. For it was the garages that housed the forerunners of what today we would call computers.

A mix of experience and inexperience, mainly very young and very talented. The men and women of Central Bureau were dedicated, idealistic and determined.

There was a tremendous spirit of camaraderie based on shared tasks and what we call today the mission imperative, as the veterans’ accounts attest. Rank and national identity took second place to getting the job done: which was — through the timely provision of signals intelligence, to facilitate the defeat of an implacable enemy.

And the task was too vast and demanding to be tackled in any other way. The Japanese were acutely communications security aware. They used high-grade ciphers and complex codes which required intense and concentrated intellectual and technical efforts to break.

Meekin recounted some of the achievements of Central Bureau, including the bombing campaign against Wewak and Lae, the breaking of the Mainline army codes, and the invasion of Hollandia. He closed by saying, ‘To the men and women of Central Bureau — we honour your legacy and we salute you.’1

Meekin then introduced the director of security and future capability at the Australian Signals Directorate, Derek Dalton, who said, ‘Their weapons were not rifles and guns. Their weapons were their incredible talent for solving puzzles, their imagination and the sheer determination to prevail in the face of incredible technical challenges.’2

Many of the veterans of Central Bureau and the ASWG had made contact with each other in 1975, thirty years after the end of the war, when the existence of the signals-intelligence work became declassified. There were arguments when they gathered in Sydney because some of those present believed they should not break their oath of silence. During the war, nobody had said there was a thirty-year limit. They had sworn to keep the secrets forever, and believed they should honour that promise.3

But, despite the objections, an association was formed thirty years later, and they got to know each other. They were no longer code-breakers or Kana operators; just normal people living normal lives. They started a newsletter to share memories and try to piece together what exactly had happened during the war years. That newsletter is still running today. Even as late as the year 2000, while other Second World War veteran’s associations dwindled, the Central Bureau Intelligence Corps Association was still growing as other veterans continued to discover its existence and make contact with their wartime colleagues.

Resentment continued to burn for many of them, decades later, about the lack of acknowledgement from the Australian government of their wartime roles.4 Jack Brown related in his book Katakana Man how, after the war, he attended an ANZAC day march in 1948. He had sustained lifelong injuries from crippling illnesses acquired during operations, but was not deterred. He was proud of his service, and wanted to march:

I managed to walk quite well but, to my amazement, some supposed Air Force aircrew friends, who had enlisted with me and had received rank, referred to me as an ‘erk’ and said, ‘Just an LAC’. This name erk had been given to RAAF ground staff. Little did these rude friends realise how vital my work had been and, of course, I did not tell them what I had done. Following the march, we went to the Returned Services League clubrooms in Adelaide and one of the guys grabbed my tie and bit it off at the knot and said, ‘Now you have been operational.’ What an insult! It was 50 years before I went into an Anzac Day march again.5

Brown was unusual in even attending. Veterans of signals intelligence knew they were not welcome, and for the most part stayed home, watching the ANZAC day marches on the television.

If any of them hoped for recognition after the organisations they worked for became declassified, they were to be disappointed. By the time Steve Meekin unveiled the plaque and gave his words of thanks, few remained, and fewer still were able to attend.

The plaque unveiling was not the first time that the Central Bureau veterans had returned to Nyrambla, their former secret workplace in suburban Brisbane. They had gone back once before, in 1988, when Abe Sinkov, having retired from the NSA, visited Australia to reunite with the Australians he had known during the war.

To honour his visit, the veterans privately organised a plaque to be made, and gained permission from the owners of Nyrambla to install the plaque at the front entrance and to hold a small event with Sinkov. There was no fanfare, and there was no media.

The plaque said,

Central Bureau, an organisation comprising service personnel of Australia, U.S.A., Britain, Canada and New Zealand, both men and women, functioned in this house from 1942 till 1945. From intercepted enemy radio messages the organisation provided intelligence which made a decisive contribution to the Allied victory in the Pacific War.

Madeline Chidgey, one of the remaining Garage Girls in attendance that day, wrote about the plaque in the next newsletter, saying, ‘I wonder how many young eyes will see it when we are gone, and ponder on its meaning.’6