Canberra Times columnist Tim The Yowie Man searches for the remains of a WW2 fort near the Cathcart tank traps after bushfires hit the area in late 2020.
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00:00 So we found the tank traps in the southeast forest near Cathcart and most of them are still there.
00:06 They survived and they survived recent fires. However the fort, a large fort which was built
00:14 near the tank traps has unfortunately succumbed to recent fires. There's nothing or virtually
00:20 nothing of it left. There's only a few little signs that there was once a fort here including
00:25 right here where I am you can see the cross here where two pieces of timber were joined
00:30 to create what the fort looked like. And here here's some old photographs that have been
00:34 provided with that show exactly what not particularly this fort but forts within
00:39 this general area look like. This could be the last remaining sign of the forts here which is
00:47 which is quite sad because the fires have gone through and virtually obliterated everything else.
00:53 But there are a few other signs that the forts were once here or at least it was stationed here.
00:58 There's a there's a rusting 44 gallon drum and also some other pieces of metal but curiously
01:04 there's also some zigzag trenches including one just behind me that indicate maybe they were
01:11 getting ready to the volunteer defense corps were getting ready to defend this or maybe they were
01:17 just training had a bit of spare time and they built the zigzag trenches. But it's amazing that
01:22 up here in the middle of nowhere volunteer defense corps were here during the second world war
01:27 with a fort and unfortunately 80 or so years later sadly there's not much of it left.