A NEW book launched last weekend is commemorating the region\u2019s mining engineers, sappers, geologists and officers who were part of tunnelling companies that saw service during World War One.<\/p>\n
While the focus is often on the battlefield above, Mining Mud & Medals<\/em> looks at the subterranean war and the contributions of the men who dug tunnels under the frontlines.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at photos especially places like Flanders, there wasn\u2019t much left above ground. So how else were you going to attack,\u201d said project manager Yvon Davis. \u201cTunnelling wasn\u2019t a bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n The publication is the work of Ms Davis and many academics and researchers, and was born out of her previous experience working for SBS Radio.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an incidence where five Anzacs were found while digging for a gas line near Ypres,\u201d Ms Davis said. \u201cI would then check out who, what and where, ring them up and do an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen doing stories like that quite often I\u2019d be told about the tunnels and the tunnelers and did I know that a lot of the Anzacs tunnelling came from Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were missing a link. We hear about World War One but nobody\u2019s looked at tunnelling and the history from Ballarat with all the mining that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n Mining Mud & Medals<\/em> takes a detailed look at the aspects of engineering companies and the engineers, sappers and other personnel raised for the units from Ballarat and surrounds.<\/p>\n It features chapters on the role of tunnelers in Gallipoli and on the Western Front as well as other aspects of their pre and post war lives.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had Michael Taffe do a couple of chapters, he\u2019s an expert on the Avenues of Honour,\u201d Ms Davis said. \u201cDr Janice Newton looked at recruitment and what happened when they got home.<\/p>\n \u201cSimon Jacks writes about the start of the war and Clare Gervasoni did a chapter on the schools of mines.\u201d<\/p>\n The service men featured in Mining Mud & Medals<\/em> all have one thing in common, they were either from the district or studied at a school of mines in Ballarat, Daylesford, Clunes or Creswick.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys knew how to dig a hole and how to support it,\u201d Ms Davis said. \u201cWhat we forget is in the tunnelling division not everybody was a mining engineer or a geologist. The Ballarat School of Mines also trained people as electricians, as odd as it sounds, they were putting lights inside of the tunnels.<\/p>\n \u201cThen you\u2019ve got the carpenters, they would build the structures to support the tunnels.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately three companies were raised from Australia, while others came from New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.<\/p>\n Ms Davis said that once the tunnelers got into the theatre they could get moved about and ended up serving with other nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThey often interchanged,\u201d Ms Davis said. \u201cWhen we did research we found someone would be helping out the Canadians for a while. We had one who worked with the British tunnelers who was from Ballarat and there were two from the area that went to New Zealand.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a national tunnelers memorial in New Zealand and I went there and asked, \u2018Any Aussies?\u2019 and they said, \u201cYeah, we\u2019ve got a few.\u201d Then you start looking through the list and we found one from Allendale.\u201d<\/p>\n