10 – What if it was something else entirely?

It must have been the surprise when I saw that Jo had come back online today  .. and here’s me thinking the lady was gone for good. Not so. Then everything went bright, like a light had been turned on in a room that had been dark for over seventy years and over there in a corner an old bookcase with only one book on its many shelves.

I’m talking about the Freeman Rubaiyat.

But first a little historical background:

‘Following the advances in military technology of World War II, Australia and the United Kingdom formed the Anglo-Australia Joint Project in 1946. The centrepiece of the project was the establishment of a long-range weapons testing facility at Woomera. The area was declared a Prohibited Area in 1947 and the first military trial took place in December 1947.’

https://www.defence.gov.au/bases-locations/sa/woomera/about

‘Once the US became aware that a 1945 UK strategic plan had passed through the Australian government to the Soviets, Washington reduced Canberra’s access to classified information. By July 1948, a complete embargo applied. This blackout was disastrous for the Empire because the UK wanted US expertise for the nuclear rocketry at Woomera. The ban suited the US strategists by keeping their allies on a short lead.’

https://www.surplusvalue.org.au/McQueen/c_war_aus/c_war_aus_dom/cwar_aus_d_petrov_commission.htm

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The Freeman Rubaiyat went missing very early in the piece, so quickly the police were unable to take any photographs, allowing the press to print an image of a similar book and a mocked up torn page instead. But trying to convince anyone that this is the case after 75 years is an impossible task, not unlike trying to convince readers that Carl Webb is the same height as his brother Roy, though we persist.

‘The mess in Canberra had to be cleaned up. On 7 February 1948, MI5 head Sir Percy Sillitoe and a counter-intelligence officer, Roger Hollis, arrived to uncover how “top secret” material had been leaked. After a search of file records, the Defence Department concluded that an External Affairs officer, Ian Milner, was among the culprits. In July 1948, Prime Minister Chifley read Sillitoe’s report in London when the British government again urged him to set up a new intelligence organisation. In August, Hollis returned to Canberra with more MI5 men to establish ASIO. That agency devoted itself to pursuing the nest of traitors, in what became known as “the Case”.’

Nest of traitors. More MI5 men.

Nobody could argue that South Australia didn’t have a few traitorous nests given the development of long-range weapons at Woomera just as nobody could reasonably argue that the establishment of ASIO by Roger Hollis and his MI5 men in 1948 didn’t mean that existing security operations weren’t alerted to the crisis, and considering that the police acted as a de-facto security force at the time one might think that the new instructions passed down from the fledging ASIO would have been to alert them of anything ‘out of the ordinary’ happening on their patch, especially in the more sensitive states, like South Australia.

Now we have a well-dressed, unidentified man found dead, possible poisoned, on a South Australian beach in late 1948. Some time later a copy of the Rubaiyat with a code written on the back cover together with a couple of telephone numbers and a name was found and linked to the same man.

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Then the book disappeared.

The Rubaiyat wasn’t lost by the police.

It was commandeered by ASIO.