A Lost Submarine
Wednesday, 28th May 2008 by James Turnbull
The town of Holbrook, Australia, is notable as home to the only set of traffic lights between Sydney and Melbourne. Slightly more interesting though is that here, 160 miles inland we can plainly see a full-size submarine.
Originally this place was known as Germantown (a name that didn't sit too well during WWI), so they chose the new name to honour Lieutenant Norman Douglas Holbrook, a British submarine captain who had been awarded the highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross.
80 years later the town was gifted the stern section of the HMAS Otway, an ex-Royal Australian Navy submarine. Despite Lt. Holbrook not having had anything to do with this particular submarine, the residents had by now fallen in love with all things submarine, and subsequently tried to raise funds to purchase the rest of the decommissioned vessel.
Unfortunately, even with a large donation from Holbrook's widow, they only raised enough cash to purchase the top half, which is what we see protruding from the ground here.
Read more on the sub over at Wikipedia and see ground level pictures on Flickr.
Thanks to Simon Burgess.
The traffic lights fact – if true – is actually more interesting than the submarine.
I wonder where they bought half a submarine. And why the submarine seller wanted to sell it, and not the bottom half.
Haha, this reminds me of the outline of the USS South Dakota in Sioux Falls, SD (another deeply landlocked location):
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=&hl=en&ll=43.543353,-96.762761&z=18
Instead of just the top half, they salvaged a couple of guns, the anchor, a propellor, and a few other chunks.
The traffic lights fact is not correct (and actually hasn’t been for a very long time ie 10-20 years) There are hundreds of lights between sydney and melbourne now
The traffic lights thing is true, again, thanks to a recent bypass of Albury – if you count Sydney as “the edge of Sydney” and Melbourne similarly. Holbrook is pretty much the last town of any size you pass through left without a bypass.
The submarine isn’t a submarine at all – it’s made of fiberglass and concrete. It’s a replica. I’ve climbed up on top of it myself. There is a propeller from a real submarine nearby (the white patch southwest of the replica), but as far as I could tell there was no real submarine in the big one, unless they made submarines very differently 30 years ago 🙂
I’m more surprised they have traffic lights here at all – at least I couldn’t figure out in the image where that would be
(excuse my english, i’m a french frog that didn’t read H. Potter in english) If you want another submarine, please look at : View Placemark
On your right, that’s called the “Argonaute”, a submarine-museum-submarine in Paris.
Just on the left, this is not a cristal ball reflecting the sky… this is the “Geode”, a panoramic movie theatre.
Thanks !
la Citè de la science… i love that place…
i love every place in Paris..
I must be blind, I don’t see that sub anywhere, unless it’s inside the building? On the other hand, the Swiss have one here, which is for all it’s alongside water, it’s a very long way from anything calling for deep diving – Lake Lucern only joins the oceans after several hundred miles of Rhine navigation, and there’s a very solid weir in town which rather puts the stop to that plan!
Speaking of ships that aren’t where they oughta be (near water), there’s this.
Sure, from here it doesn’t look like a ship. But it is. Lockheed Martin uses this building to test its Aegis system, and from the ground it looks like there’s a giant battleship comin’ right atcha! You can see it plainly as you drive along the interstate (not to mention the myriad backroads), but as you can tell from the map it’s in the middle of a freakin’ cornfield!
This is what is looks like at ground level.
I think in Holbrook you actually have to slow to 40km/h for a school zone.
USS Batfish, in Muskogee, Oklahoma.. full sub… I have walked through it many times, its in a war memorial park, the guns have been takin off the deck and displayed at the main office on site.