A daring wartime escape
How a group of miners got away from the enemy
The men abandoned their mining site and made their way over the Owen Stanley Ranges on a rough path that became known as the Bulldog Track.
Australian film and television actor
Peter Phelps has written a book that tells the story of his grandfather, Tom, who was too old to enlist in the army during World War 2 but was caught up in the Japanese invasion of Papua New Guinea.
Tom was among 200 civilian employees of the Bulolo Gold Dredging Company who had to flee from the advancing Japanese forces.
The men hurriedly abandoned their mining site at Edie Creek, about 50 kilometres southwest of Lae, at 11pm on March 4, 1942, destroying everything they could. They made their way south, over the treacherous Owen Stanley Ranges, on a rough path that became known as the Bulldog Track.
The track was later described by the author, spy and newspaper journalist Peter Ryan as “longer, higher, steeper, wetter, colder and rougher than Kokoda.”
“They were civilians; gold miners, carpenters and all sorts of trades. So there was nothing documented about these guys,” Peter
Phelps writes in his book The Bulldog Track
(Hachette). “It was such a time of war that a couple of hundred miners’ story would just not be considered because it wasn’t part of the war effort. But they were as brave as any soldier.”
Researching the book was not easy because very few records of the escape exist. But one unlikely source came from his grandfather’s battered pith helmet.
During the escape, Tom had scrawled notes and a rudimentary map on baking paper and had hidden it away in his helmet. He recorded dates and locations, including where his dead companions were buried. That, and a letter Tom wrote to the editor of The
Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in 1944, constitute the entire first-hand history of the Bulldog Track.
Tom passed his information on to the authorities when he finally reached Port Moresby and a vital supply road was built along the path he had surveyed. The road took eight months to complete and was hailed at the time as one of the greatest feats of military engineering.
The chief engineer, W. J. Reinhold, later wrote: “Every foot of progress made on this road exacted the ultimate in courage, endurance, skill and toil. Its construction took a toll from surveyor, engineer, labourer and native carrier alike.”
During one five-month period of construction, more than two-thirds of the crew contracted malaria and it wasn’t until September 1943 that the first vehicles were able to make a clumsy passage along the perilous route.
Tom was also lavish in his praise for the native ‘bois’ who had guided them along the way, doubtlessly a vital part of their success and survival.
“This book is not a work of fiction,” writes Peter Phelps. “It is a tribute to the resilience and strength that saw my grandfather survive, and his family hold together while he was gone. It is a tribute to all those who survived the Bulldog Track.”