November 2008 was the 90th anniversary of the end of
World War I.
We all remember
images from that war, of massive artillery barrages and
soldiers crossing shattered landscapes towards certain
slaughter. Beneath these killing fields of the Western
Front, however, another war was taking place, a deadly
game 30 meters down, played between thousands of troops.
These were not infantrymen… but miners. Their mutual
goal was to tunnel beneath 'no man's land', under the
opposing lines and destroy the German enemy from below.
Unfortunately, the Germans had the same idea and were
digging in from the other side.
Over
4585 Australian miners took part in this secret
subterranean war, fighting under stress and conditions
that terrified even the most hardened infantryman on the
surface. Their extraordinary story has never been told
on screen.
BENEATH HILL 60 is the action packed story of
Australia's cat-and-mouse underground mine warfare - one
of the most misunderstood, misrepresented, and
mystifying conflicts of WW I. It was secret struggle
BENEATH the Western Front that combined daring
engineering, technology and science. Few on the surface
knew of the brave, claustrophobic and sometimes barbaric
work of these tunnellers.
Our
story surrounds the 1st Australian Tunneling Division
who were responsible for the mines set under 'Hill 60',
a high point that dominated that part of the killing
fields of Belgium. They were led by Captain
Oliver Woodward who had started his mining career in
Charters Towers, Queensland. His bravery in guarding
those underground mines and their subsequent massive
explosions broke the gridlocked trench warfare of the
past 3 years.
BENEATH HILL 60 is a new Australian FEATURE FILM
directed by renowned actor/director Jeremy Sims and
written by screenwriter David Roach. It will shed light
on this untold story of the Australian miners with a
finely tuned dramatic script and the finest actors, working in
underground sets built in association with the mining
community in North Queensland.