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00:01A fight to forge a railway through Australia's most impossible landscapes.
00:07The Tablelands line is in many ways a symbol of the human spirit.
00:13Trying to build a railway in such a swappy area, it would be right up here in water.
00:19The difficulty is immense.
00:21An underground discovery that would change the region's fortunes.
00:27The risks were rock falls, explosions.
00:31People died. People had life-changing injuries.
00:35How could a secret World War II military base help in the fight against Japan?
00:42Whoever found the cure would win the war.
00:46And a silver bullet carving a path through the outback.
00:51There's no crossings. There's no barriers. The wildlife is on the tracks.
00:57There's a lot of secrets attached to it. The whole thing's just awesome.
01:05This is the Tablelands Railway Network. And here is its hidden story.
01:14In this series, we explore some of the greatest railways in the world.
01:21And the secrets surrounding them.
01:24From the ancient hills of Europe to the wastes of the Yukon Valley in North America,
01:30their dark and forgotten pasts have left their mark on history.
01:53The Tablelands line is serious railway building.
01:58I mean, this isn't just negotiating a mountain pass or a swamp.
02:03It's kind of doing every challenge that you can possibly face and overcoming it.
02:12Imagine trying to survey when you cannot see the sky.
02:18Imagine you can't tell north from south by the position of the sun.
02:23This is an impenetrable forest to get through.
02:30On a wet, horrible day when it's absolutely teeming down with rain
02:34and, you know, there's water running down the track
02:36and you're soaking wet, covered in leeches, it takes another dimension.
02:46And, of course, it comes at a great human cost.
02:48A lot of these poor people who have come from all over the world
02:51were working in atrocious conditions and worked to their death.
02:57But the fact that it takes nearly a quarter of a century to build this line
03:02means that there were people there who were never going to give up
03:05no matter what was being thrown against them.
03:11Built in the north-eastern tip of Australia in the state of Queensland,
03:16the original railway line of the network stretched from Cairns on the Pacific coast
03:21and finished inland at the town of Herberton.
03:29Hidden under the canopy, thousands of holes lead to an underground world
03:36that holds the secret to why the train was built in the first place.
03:44Duncan Ray is a local adventurer.
03:49This area between Herberton and Chiligo has the most diverse geology of any place in the world.
03:57You find pretty much everything here.
04:00Tin, gold, silver, copper, indium, antimony.
04:06It's just endless.
04:09This railway line was built to make money for the mining industry.
04:13But it ended up playing its part in the biggest conflict the world has ever seen.
04:24We tend to think of the Second World War as quite a European-centric conflict.
04:30But of course the war in the Far East was just as big, if not more so.
04:39Australia, of course, was right in the forefront of this war.
04:42And not many people know that Queensland became one of the major allied bases in the region.
04:52What's really important about the story of this railway line
04:56is that it tells us so much about what Australia did for the fight against the Japanese.
05:05Away from the public eye, the railway line was helping with a huge military project.
05:14Joe Barnes' father was part of the Australian Army during the war.
05:19The whole war here is a bit of a secret.
05:24The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
05:29and were moving into the Pacific.
05:33Australia was next in line.
05:37In February 1942, they bombed the northern tip of the country.
05:42The whole nation was under threat.
05:49There was a line drawn across Brisbane called the Brisbane Line.
05:53It was said that, oh, we'll lose all that part of northern Australia.
05:58We'll get it back later.
06:00The general blame me saying, no, we won't do that.
06:03We will defend.
06:06How did this region and its railways end up playing a role in the fight against Japan?
06:16To find out, we need to go back to the heady days of the Industrial Revolution.
06:24At the end of the 19th century, the whole world is exploding.
06:28It's going crazy for raw materials to build towns and railways and infrastructure.
06:34And top of the list of desirable items is tin.
06:39Prospectors were searching the tablelands for raw materials to mine.
06:44Local historian Mary Searston returns to the place where it all started.
06:50The whole reason for the Herbert and Tin Field was, in fact, a rock like this,
06:57which was picked up by the original prospectors.
07:01And the funny part about it is they didn't recognise it as all
07:05until an emu came screaming down those hills
07:08and kicked its foot against a rock like this and went limping away.
07:13They smelt it and got a little tiny, witty bit of tin, or so the folklore says.
07:18The gleams that you see are pure tin oxide.
07:22It was just so rich.
07:2571% of this rock, at least, was just pure tin.
07:31But this precious tin, so in demand across the world,
07:35was 40 miles away from the coast.
07:40Nature doesn't put tin in convenient places.
07:43And to get it out the ground, you need equipment.
07:47And we're not just talking about a few wagon loads.
07:49We're talking about tonnes and tonnes of equipment.
07:56The tin ore was contained in the granite rocks that are in the area
08:00and they had to be crushed down.
08:01And just behind me is one of those crushing mills.
08:03It's called a battery because there are five big steel feet that were lifted up and down
08:10and any rocks that got caught underneath were crushed down to a very fine powder.
08:17It's ridiculous to be shifting that stuff by hand.
08:20They needed a mechanical way to do it.
08:25The only lines of communication between Herbert and the coast were muddy tracks that were washed away in the monsoon
08:32rainy seasons.
08:34Six months to travel the 40 miles across rainforest, bogged to the axles at times.
08:44Compare that to the railways.
08:46That same piece of equipment would probably be here in Herberton the next or the day after.
08:55A railway line was the answer.
08:59But first, they would have to conquer nature.
09:06As a railway engineer, if you want a challenge, the Tablelands Railway will give it to you.
09:12It starts off in the mangrove swamps, heads into rainforest and then through the mountains.
09:20And then you'll find yourself in the bush environment.
09:24Four incredibly different, very challenging environments in a relatively short distance.
09:33The 40 miles that separated Herberton from the coast didn't only present a challenging terrain.
09:39There was also the threatening wildlife.
09:43Crocodile infested rivers.
09:45Spiders and snakes lurking in the dense forest.
09:51And even trees were to be feared.
09:56Tim Daniel is an Australian Reserve Army major and a survival expert.
10:02So this is probably not unlike the conditions that the early explorers experienced in the 1870s.
10:12This sort of vine thicket is typical of what you get on these steep slopes.
10:26So this is one of the dangers in the rainforest. It's called wait a while or lawyer vine.
10:31It's a cane and it throws out these little tendrils with recurved hooks on them.
10:39If you get into a big thicket of this, it can take you hours because you get tangled up in
10:44it and you have to unpick yourself or cut yourself out of it.
10:48There's no shadows, there's no reference point.
10:51So unless you've got a compass and you understand the lie of the land, it's very difficult to navigate.
10:57Not only was it difficult to navigate, the railway surveyors would have to cross the tribal lands of local Aboriginal
11:05populations.
11:13There are two histories to the land in that part of Australia.
11:17There's the history that came with the white settlers and all of their doings.
11:20But then there's the history of the Aboriginal people, which goes back 40,000 years.
11:28The authorities were going to need help.
11:33In 1882, they contacted a mysterious and unusual man by the name of Christie Palmerston.
11:43A secretive character with unknown origins, who they trusted to find a route for the railway to the coast.
11:54Now, Christie Palmerston was a very important character.
11:58Well, certainly he thought so.
12:00He was a bushman, an explorer.
12:02He'd done a lot of work in the Cairns region.
12:06He had a sidekick called Pompo.
12:11Pompo was a local Aboriginal who could guide Palmerston through the ancestral indigenous tracks
12:17that crisscrossed the jungle.
12:23Christie Palmerston spent three months combing the country between Port Douglas and the Baron Gorge,
12:31looking for suitable gradients.
12:34And he makes that remark that he just couldn't see where a railway could come through.
12:43In spite of the impossible landscape, Palmerston eventually put a route forward.
12:49He recommended going from Port Douglas, that was then a thriving harbour town in the north.
12:55This option avoided having to build any tunnels and included very few bridges.
13:04In the end, though, the dwindling town of Cairns was chosen, because it was thought to have a better port.
13:14But that meant building 15 tunnels and no less than 90 bridges.
13:21For better or worse, the line would start in Cairns.
13:29Now all they had to do was build it.
13:32But that was easier said than done.
13:39Building in the tropics meant that the weather was a constant worry.
13:43In this area, there is an annual average of seven feet of rainfall and regular cyclones.
13:54Nature threw quite a lot of curveballs up on the line between Huberton and Cairns.
13:59But you have to get over it in engineering terms.
14:02You have to see each new challenge as something to rise to and to force that railway through.
14:10They really did meet an awful lot of challenges.
14:20The first hurdle was that Cairns was built on a challenging terrain.
14:28You can see here why they had so much difficulty in trying to build a railway in such a swappy
14:34area.
14:35And we're walking in the dry season.
14:37This would have been, it would be up to your knees or right up here in water.
14:42You know, the difficulty is immense.
14:46And of course, not only swamps, you've got snakes.
14:48You've got brown snakes, taipans, black snakes and leeches, as well as a myriad of mosquitoes,
14:56which of course helped spread fever amongst the workers and brought them down very easily.
15:04To make it worse, the railway contractors, trying to keep costs low, weren't offering proper healthcare to their workers.
15:13The Cairns Post reported the story of a man who was suffering from a fever.
15:21When they got him to the hospital, he had a small hole in the bottom of his back, which was
15:26maggot ridden.
15:27And he was covered from knee to shoulders in human excrement.
15:32And he died in the hospital.
15:36And the challenge had just begun.
15:43After the swamps, the railway builders had to reach the top of the tablelands by carving through the hostile jungle
15:50on a steeping climb that went over a thousand feet.
15:59When you set out to map out a railway line, you want to find the flattest spot, the lowest points
16:04to take that track through.
16:06Following the rivers are a fantastic way to do that.
16:12And the barren river just took you naturally through to where you wanted to go.
16:20But using the river was not enough to keep the costs down.
16:29Monsoon season, mudslides and multiple route changes meant that the expenses escalated.
16:41In the end, building the first 32 miles cost the equivalent of 165 million pounds in today's money.
16:52It was an incredible achievement.
16:54But in 1890, Australia hit a decade of financial turmoil.
17:03The funds for the line to Herberton were pulled out and building works were dropped.
17:12But one man stepped in.
17:17A gentleman by the name of John Moffat, who was a mining entrepreneur from the 1880s, decided he could do
17:23it.
17:23He never overbuilt anything.
17:25So his railways tended to be a little bit light on rail size.
17:31Starting in 1900, they were put down very quickly.
17:34In the next three years, he built over 200 miles of railway.
17:43These railways linked his mining empire in the west to the existing line.
17:51The original route had been completely diverted away from Herberton.
17:59One of those lines led to the town of Irvingbank.
18:09This is the old, original railway formation.
18:12This is what it would be like coming in by train into Irvingbank.
18:17John Moffat set his whole empire based on this little community here.
18:23So you'd see the lovely lake on your left with the hotels over there, and then you'd hear the stamping
18:30of the battery, the 30 head of stampers crushing the rocks.
18:39This is the old railway station here.
18:42It's a nice, long, corrugated iron building with windows along the top to allow light to come in.
18:50This and Herberton became the premium mining towns of North Queensland.
18:55And probably the centre of tin mining in Australia.
19:01One of Moffat's most lucrative deposits was based just outside Irvingbank.
19:08Vulcan Mine was the deepest tin mine in Australia, and yielded some of the purest tin in the world at
19:14the time.
19:17The railways and the mines had a workforce that made themselves heard.
19:21And it's no coincidence that the first socialist government in the world was elected there back then.
19:31Albeit for a week only.
19:37Despite a strong union and left-leaning policies, working underground was harsh, to say the least.
19:49The decision to go and work in a mine is never going to be easy, it's never going to be
19:53anyone's first glamorous job to take up.
19:57You go there to earn money, and you do earn good money.
20:00But at what cost?
20:05Time has stood still in these abandoned mines.
20:10Objects left behind by the last workers give a snapshot of life underground at the turn of the 20th century.
20:19It's hot and sticky in here, and when they're working in here, they would be covered in dust.
20:25Some of them got minus tices and died from that.
20:30So it looks like this might be the end of the tunnel here.
20:34And it looks like they've gone uphill, up into the...
20:39...started to form a shaft going up.
20:42That glowing little area there, that's the last remnants of the tin.
20:47This could have been, you know, a few hundred dollars or maybe a few thousand dollars worth of tin out
20:52of this little pocket.
20:54The risks were rock falls, explosions.
20:58My great uncle, he worked in a mine in Charters Towers, and at one stage the rocks started moving,
21:04and the timbers were starting to groan and creak under the weight of the falling or the loosening rock.
21:10So he held the timbers up while the other miners that were working with him were able to escape out
21:14of the mine.
21:15The sheer weight of holding that up ruptured all his stomach, and he died a couple of days later, unfortunately.
21:26People died.
21:28People got sick.
21:29People had life-changing injuries.
21:33So that balance between the money in your pocket and your health had to be very, very carefully weighed up.
21:43After the Australian Depression was over, the train line carried on growing south, and finally reached Herberton in 1910.
21:55Mining by then was not as lucrative as it once was.
21:59But the lines took on other purposes.
22:04They were used for timber trade, railway ambulances, and for transporting students on their way to school.
22:14In the 1940s, though, something very strange happened to the region.
22:22With the Second World War, this area, in miller nowhere, exploded.
22:27Suddenly you've got thousands of troops coming and going.
22:32World War II brought a huge spike in railway traffic in the region.
22:37It went up by 66%.
22:39And notably, on the Cairns to Herberton line, in one 24-hour period, there were 43 trains,
22:46as opposed to the usual sleepy one or two.
22:49But why was there so much activity in this remote part of Australia?
22:57Australian troops fought all over the world during the Second World War.
23:00They fought in North Africa, the Middle East.
23:03They fought defending Singapore, Thailand, Burma, you name it.
23:08But they also fought on the island of New Guinea.
23:14Which is just under 100 miles from the Queensland coast.
23:18So this is right on Australia's doorstep.
23:20This is fighting for the defence of the homeland.
23:28The fight in New Guinea was so close that people living in Cairns said they could hear the bombs.
23:39They needed a military base in Australia to support the Allied fight.
23:43And they found it in the Atherton Tablelands.
23:50Part of the reason they chose this area is because of the railway.
23:55That infrastructure, that civil engineering, allowed huge numbers to come in and to be transported around goods and people.
24:04That enabled the Australians to rapidly fortify the area and turn it into a military zone.
24:13This top secret project transformed the area into a hive of activity.
24:19They built fortifications, radar stations, an airfield, anti-aircraft units, supply facilities and barracks.
24:33They were all there to accommodate the tens of thousands of Australian and American troops that took over the sparsely
24:41populated region.
24:48Thanks to the Tablelands mild climate and tropical geography, it was the perfect location for troops to prepare for fighting
24:56in the Pacific.
24:59We're in Kalunga and we're on a feature I'd call Tactics Hill.
25:04And this was used by the 16th Brigade for training and they dug in an entire battalion defensive position on
25:14this little ridge.
25:16Going round with a metal detector we found piles of used cartridges from both Owen guns and Bren guns.
25:26It was used as a teaching device and they practised attacking and defending here.
25:35The railway line runs along on the other side of the river.
25:39It's well within weapons range.
25:43I think this position was chosen mostly because of its tactical teaching.
25:49But also the theory would have been that it blocked use of the railway.
25:54So if the Japanese decided to advance along the railway, this position would have effectively prevented them from moving along
26:03the railway.
26:09North of Kalunga stands an old building.
26:13It is the old Tolga station.
26:18Now a museum, there is very little clue to the pivotal role it played during World War II.
26:25Lottie Hastie remembers.
26:28The station was up there, you can see that, and this was where there used to be two tanks up
26:37very high, filled with water, where the trains used to come in there and fill up their engine.
26:47You know, the railway men were kept very busy on keeping the lines up date.
26:55They couldn't afford an accident with, you know, thousands of troops on board.
27:01It was a busy, busy station.
27:07But Tolga station hides another secret.
27:10A few kilometres along the railway, there are historic remains in a place called Rocky Creek.
27:24So today, what you can see at Rocky Creek is but a shadow of what it was like during the
27:29war.
27:30Much of the site is neglected.
27:32You've just got these old walkways left covered in bitumen.
27:36You've got some pipes left over from toilets and bathing blocks.
27:44But what are these abandoned remains doing in this area?
27:48And why are they so close to where the railway once ran?
27:54Rocky Creek was the biggest hospital complex in the Southern Hemisphere.
28:03A huge hospital complex built out of the bush, built where there was nothing there before.
28:09It was built incredibly quickly for a purpose.
28:13Out of canvas and then later on bits of concrete on the foundations, in a very temporary kind of way.
28:19And eventually it became an enormous complex with 1,200 beds in the military zone treating all sorts of patients,
28:29war wounded, those suffering from venereal disease and even psychiatric disorders.
28:39In its three years of operation, 60,000 patients were treated at the Rocky Creek Hospital.
28:49Today, the only standing building that remains is this strange structure that they call the igloo.
29:00This igloo was built as a temporary building 73 years ago, put up very quickly and it was used as
29:08an entertainment place.
29:11The stage was used for vaudeville acts and travelling shows that came through to entertain the troops.
29:19There were dancers held here and there were nurses, of course, who were working at the hospital.
29:25And there was a great deal of exchange between the Americans and the Australians.
29:34But a more sinister business was taking place in the vast Rocky Creek complex.
29:40A secret experiment with the potential to help win the war in the Pacific.
29:49In the South West Pacific War, malaria was every bit as much a threat as the enemy.
29:54The US calculated that at any one time, 25% of their soldiers were incapacitated with malaria.
30:01Malaria is a disease that gives you very high fever, aching bones, aching joints and it recurs.
30:11The way that the disease is spread is if mosquito bites somebody who is infected and then bites somebody else
30:19who is not infected, the infection is spread that way.
30:26Mosquitoes thrive in humid, muddy, lowland terrains.
30:31The Tablelands high altitude, away from these insects, was a perfect location for the hospital to treat this disease.
30:42Among the more controversial experiments carried out at Rocky Creek was malaria injections.
30:53I think the idea behind subjecting volunteers to the malaria bug was that, as it affected Japanese as well as
31:02Allied soldiers,
31:04whoever found the cure for malaria would win the war.
31:10Finding a solution for this disease would have given a tactical edge in the South Pacific fight.
31:16So no effort was spared.
31:21In the midst of it all, the Tablelands railway network was vital.
31:27Not only was it bringing patients in, it was also taking them away.
31:33There were 25 trains a day at times, bringing troops here for training and troops who were injured or sick.
31:43There are photos that I've seen of them putting people on stretchers through the windows because they didn't fit through
31:49the doors.
31:51There were so many patients that Rocky Creek, despite being vast, was not enough.
31:59To remedy it, ambulance trains were working around the clock to move patients onto hospitals in the South.
32:08Those trains were given priority all along the coast.
32:17Much of the Tablelands railways have now disappeared.
32:21But there is one section still in use.
32:24And the carriages running on it have survived through the different eras of the line.
32:31These carriages, they used to be called grandstand carriages.
32:35So they had all the seats lengthwise and all the seats used to face out towards the views.
32:41So when the World War started, Second World War, they actually converted them into their ambulance carriages.
32:48So all the seats were taken out.
32:52Those ambulance trains transported both Australian and American soldiers.
32:58They had to be put in different carriages just to save conflict.
33:02A lot of the time the Australians thought that the Americans were dressed a lot better, their uniforms were a
33:08lot nicer.
33:09And, of course, the Australian girls all fell for the American charm and the nice uniforms.
33:15So they felt that they were stealing the Australian girls away from them.
33:22After the war, the Tablelands transport system was completely transformed.
33:27Whilst the troops left behind brand new roads, they also left a railway network in tatters.
33:37The railways suffered extreme wear and tear during the war because they simply hadn't been designed to be used at
33:43that intensity.
33:44So they required quite a lot of work afterwards to bring them back into a good condition.
33:53The railways became a good employer for the region, especially for indigenous communities.
34:01Among them, Dr George Skeen, a local historian who worked for the railways from 1967 to 1997.
34:12I met many people from all over the world.
34:16You know, people from different cultures and had a good time.
34:21You had a bed, single bed, single mattress, two plates, spoon, knife and fork, a water bag.
34:28And the work was very hard.
34:32The government was transforming the basic lines that had been built for the mining industry into reliable, sturdy structures.
34:43I worked on bridges. I was always shaking. I didn't like heights.
34:50The risk was crocodiles in bridges. They had people in cages that go down and check the piles in the
34:56water.
34:56Because salt water is very, I think it erodes timber or something, you know, very quick.
35:05But while the tracks were being refurbished, the roads were becoming more and more prevalent.
35:11By the late 1980s, trains had stopped being lucrative and much of the Tablelands railway network was closed.
35:21A page was turned.
35:28The building of the railways had changed so much for settlers, but also for indigenous communities.
35:38Sisters Daphne Miller and Desley Mosquito are descendants of the Jirabao Rainforest people.
35:45It did disrupt our way of living back then.
35:50And probably a little bit more frightening than anything, not knowing what's happening.
35:57It became something that we had to adjust to and depend upon.
36:03The railway was our mode of transport. It was just so easy to go over the road and catch it
36:10and travel from here to Cairns.
36:13And so it became part of our lifestyle.
36:17Because everything to us got us where we wanted to go.
36:24The closing down of the railways have left many people with a sense of nostalgia.
36:30But luckily, there is a group of people who are making sure the past is not completely gone.
36:41The Kuranda Scenic Railway still covers the Rainforest section of the line.
36:47The efforts of those who carved away through the thick jungle were not in vain.
36:54Today, tourists get to enjoy the stunning views.
37:02And incredibly, one of Moffat's hastily built mining routes is also among the few still being used.
37:09Although it now has a very different looking train.
37:15The Savannah Lander train is amazing.
37:19It's a total contrast to a narrow gauge freight railway.
37:24Stainless steel bullet sneaking through the countryside.
37:28This sort of lightweight construction with these amazing views from the windows just make the best of the passenger experience
37:36out there.
37:39This diesel powered rail motor is perfect for the train tracks.
37:44And it has been carefully refurbished to take tourists through the bush to the west of Cairns.
37:53It's got 1960s kind of retro styling with its Rolls-Royce diesel engines.
38:02It's really rather lovely just as an object in itself.
38:06So to get to ride on it, what an amazing experience.
38:13Will Kemp is one of the two drivers.
38:19We get to move through awesome landscapes.
38:22And we get to move a train along a line that's, you know, now the best part of a hundred
38:28and ten years old.
38:30The line's pretty old, pretty unique.
38:33The whole thing's just awesome.
38:35Every time we come up to one of these roads, we need to let them know we're here.
38:44A couple of good big blasts of the horn and just make sure the crossing's clear and we're sweet.
38:52I think with the age of this line and this railway and how long it's been here, there's a lot
38:59of secrets attached to it.
39:01Lee and I are always hearing new stories that have happened years and years and years ago.
39:09One particular one was a couple of years ago.
39:13As I told everyone who were coming into this old mining town, I had a passenger come and I got
39:16really, really excited.
39:18He was an older gentleman, but his father was actually a miner in that town and had been killed in
39:26a mining accident before this passenger was born.
39:30So he never even met his father. He had no idea that the train travelled through that town.
39:36So it held a lot of meaning to him and I'm sure that there's a hundred, a thousand stories that
39:43we are still yet to hear.
39:46Back in Herberton, the railways have left another legacy.
39:52The Tablelands Railway has seen over 130 years of human activity.
39:57That's a lot of stories and it still continues today.
40:01There are volunteers out there working, keeping things going.
40:05There are 35 men and counting who volunteer here, along with Rocky the dog.
40:11They meet up twice a week in a combined effort to keep the original railway line alive between Herberton and
40:18Atherton.
40:20The workshop started about seven years ago. The workshop behind me has been built four years ago.
40:27And that's when we got our steam locomotives in and our equipment.
40:33The volunteers are also working along the railway line.
40:36And it brings home what it must have been like for the early railway builders.
40:44Working on a railway in the late 19th century is hard work.
40:48You've got tools to an extent, you've got machinery, but only very limited.
40:54And it's still hard work.
40:56And one thing that hasn't changed in 130 years is the climate.
41:02When it rains, it really rains.
41:05And when it's sunny, it's incredibly sunny.
41:08So for the volunteers out there today, yes, they might have slightly better handles and better machinery.
41:14I really hope they have.
41:16But the climate, that's still a tough challenge.
41:21From the very beginning, the Tablelands Railway story has been an epic saga of loss and triumph over the elements.
41:30And its original line has now left its mark on the region.
41:38Cairns hadn't got the railway.
41:40If it had been Port Douglas, they would have been the centre.
41:43No, it really did make a world of difference.
41:46Cairns became a pivotal place for export and import for Far North Queensland.
41:52And it's what set this region going as a major centre in Far North Queensland.
42:01But it also had a further reaching impact.
42:04And the irony of its success is that it ultimately brought about its own demise.
42:13This particular railway line, when they built it, it's civil engineering, it's creating a safe way to move an awful
42:21lot of material over quite a long period of time.
42:24But suddenly, World War II happens and everything changes.
42:30The railway network allowed things to get moving very quickly.
42:36At that point, they built a road.
42:39So, the success of the infrastructure of the railway brought the road and the road actually condemned the railway.
42:50There is much to be learned from these abandoned tracks.
42:56The Tablelands line, you know, are in many ways a symbol of the human spirit.
43:03You realise that it was built for a reason that no longer exists.
43:07And so, therefore, you look at it and you think, maybe it's just a bit of a folly.
43:10But actually, what happened during the Second World War with the Tablelands line makes you remember that what looks useless
43:17today could be very, very useful tomorrow.
43:22But above all, it has left its mark on the lives of those who either worked or travelled along its
43:28lines.
43:29And no doubt, the next generation will ensure its legacy lives on.
43:37You are not the least.
43:40You.
43:41Right.
44:03So, once again, theABBIC Street is now moving.
44:03It is in the Other World War.
44:03So, let's see.
44:04You might draw a scene but...
44:04You might explain.
44:04You might go ahead.
44:04It is a scene but not a scene but we might see it.
44:04A scene is a scene here, I am not seeing the scene but it's a scene.
44:04Kind of, it's a scene like, I am not seeing the scene.
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