S ENIORS ONE S TOP
NEW 1½ HOUR FULLY GUIDED CRUISE
Brisbane
All aboard for the Port & Fort Cruis e
CRUISE DATE - 1ST DECEMBER
INFORMATION LINE
SENIORS ENQUIRY LINE
1300 135 500
PH: 3399 1599 or 0433 418 569
Newspaper
Your Award Winning Seniors’ Newspaper - Written for Seniors by Seniors Vol 10 - Issue No. 10
NOVEMBER 2013
1300 880 265
www.seniorsnewspaper.com.au
FREE
Nyrambla House cracked codes Talk to a real person
that helped win the war in the SW Pacific
Carol Cuming a the brass plate at the front door of Nyrambla House in Ascot. It reads: ‘Central Bureau, an organisation comprising service personnel of Australia, USA, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Both men and women functioned in this house from 1942 till 1945. From intercepted enemy radio messages, the organisation provided intelligence which made a decisive contribution to the allied victory in the Pacific War’.
Built in 1885, Nyrambla House at 21 Henry Street retains its stately appearance.
by Jim Bowden
SECRETED behind a tall, well-manicured hedge in Ascot, the stately old two-storey home blends gracefully with many of the grand houses in this wealthy northside suburb. Secrets? The rambling Nyrambla House at 21 Henry Street, built in 1885, was full of them during World War 2 – particularly from 1942 to 1945 when it housed General Douglas MacArthur’s ‘own’ signals intelligence unit for intercepting and decoding Japanese intelligence. We walked up Nyrambla’s wide tree-shaded driveway to the front door, a red cedar portal through which had stepped such military giants as the ‘American Caesar’ himself and Sir Thomas Blamey, Commander of Allied Land Forces in the South West Pacific, a general
in both world wars and the only Australian to attain the rank of field marshal. Our welcoming ‘guide’ this day was Carol Cuming, partner of Rick Roberts, the son of Nyrambla’s owner Andree Look. Nyrambla was requisitioned by the US Army in July 1942 as headquarters of the Central Bureau in Australia, a joint US-Australian secret code-breaking organisation that operated instruments from a large garage at the rear of the house. Nearby is a semi-underground bomb shelter, now used as a support wall for a swimming pool. In April 1943, from this backyard Ascot garage, operators decoded an intercepted a Japanese signal that led to the ambush and death of Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. Continued on Page 2
General Thomas Blamey inspects his and General Douglas MacArthur’s Central Bureau signal intelligence unit at Nyrambla House in Ascot on February 25, 1944.