Cootamundra

6 In August 1940, the Australian government announced its intention to prepare for coastal assaults from the Imperial Japanese Navy. At the time Australia’s entire onshore liquid fuel supply was located in coastal ‘tank farms’ which were highly vulnerable to the Japanese navy, including to guns and aircraft on its submarines. On 16 January 1941, the RAAF & Army nominated Cootamundra as its preferred bulk storage point for the Wagga Wagga area. It was NSW’s first and Australia’s third safe inland depot and came on the heels of Central Western Victoria’s Ballarat and West Gippsland’s Warrugul depots. Cootamundra’s fuel depot was to be part of a nationwide network of 31 such complexes built to secure 20 million gallons of emergency fuel beyond the reach of Japanese battleships and aircraft carriers. In the unlikely, but nonetheless possible, event that Japan invaded, this huge network would have primarily fuelled Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighters and bombers and the Australian Army’s tanks and trucks tasked with continuing the battle beyond the capital cities. Why were these large tanks constructed in Cootamundra in the first place? HISTORICAL OVERVIEW COOTAMUNDRA RAAF Lockheed Hudson. 1940. Australian War Memorial Based on ‘Location of Inland Aircraft Fuel Depots in Australia [and NSW] 1945. National Archives of Australia