Tanks on Stokes Hill
In early 1942 eleven above-ground oil tanks stood on Stokes Hill, above Darwin’s main wharf. In the first air raid, on 19 February 1942, burning tanks sent black smoke high over the harbour. Raids on 16 March and 16 June destroyed more, and seven of the eleven tanks were lost.
Going underground
The Allied Works Council was given the task of storing fuel safely. From 1943 about 400 men of the Civil Constructional Corps dug into the cliffs below the town in secret, by hand and with pneumatic tools, and a mechanical shovel helped finish the work in 1944. The storage tunnels have a horseshoe-shaped section, about 4.5 metres wide and 5.4 metres high, lined with concrete and steel.
After the war
Water kept seeping in, costs rose and the danger of bombing passed, so the tunnels never held oil during the war. In the 1950s Tunnels 5 and 6 stored jet fuel for about three years. They opened to the public on 19 February 1992, fifty years after the first raid.
