I first became aware that there had been an air raid shelter in my Grandparents backyard at Waiora Rd Heidelberg Heights, when I developed a negative of a photo I hadn’t seen before. It shows my Father’s parents Ilma and Herbert Douglas with their Pomeranian dog Rex, standing on the steps of the shelter my Grandfather built to the specifications of Air Raid Precautions. A Government booklet printed in April of 1941, which I had found on the bookshelf at home. It has instructions and detailed plans of shelters to build.
Then it all came together when I read some letters my Grandparents had written to my Dad when he was training at Puckapunyal with the 57th/60th Battalion.
This excerpt was from a letter dated 2nd of February 1942 “”I hope we don’t have to get in the air raid shelter, especially in wet weather. After the last rain it had a lot of water in it and when it was drying up it didn’t smell too good. Dad has taken a few barrow loads of dirt out he said you can’t see where it went from”.”
I asked my father about the shelter and he told me it had been filled in at the end of the war. My Grandfather had been in France in WWI and aware of the repercussions of War, hence he felt the necessity to have a shelter in the backyard to protect his family.
Source’ Ann Leonard and excerpts from the personal letters of Ilma Douglas to her son Jack.
There are references to a bomb shelter being built in Heidelberg in the book Au Revoir My Darling: an intimate war correspondence 1940-1945 by Heather Haughton
Image: State Library Victoria: Shows the shelter which was built by the Preston Municipal Council as an example of shelter construction to its ratepayers.
