About this Event
Speaker Bio & Abstract:
In 1994, Rod Beattie was approached by an Australian former prisoner of war to clear the pathway into Hellfire Pass (HFP) prior to a visit to HFP by the then Australian Minister Paul Keating. Soon after he offered his services to the Australian Thai Chamber of Commerce to voluntarily maintain the short (400 metres) pathway into Hellfire Pass. he supervised the construction of a second concrete pathway leading to the northern end of HFP.
Having become involved with HFP he set out to learn more about the history of the railway. To better understand the railway he then started to explore and map the abandoned railway and locate former PoW campsites. Locating and mapping the railway alone took four and a half years. Locating the sites of the many war time camps and other important areas took many more years. His wife, Thuy, assisted him in these endeavours.
In 1995 he was appointed manager of the Commonwealth War Cemeteries in Thailand, working part time. In this position he met many people searching for information about relatives who worked or died on the railway. To help these people he began a worldwide search for original PoW records of deaths on the railway.
The next year he was appointed Project Manager to oversee the construction of the HFP Memorial Interpretative Centre and permanent improvements to the walking trail. During this time they cleared another four kilometers of railway northwards from Compressor Cutting. John Howard opened the memorial on 24 April 1998.
In 1999 he began planning and designing a new museum in Kanchanaburi to cater for the very large number of visitors who do not have the opportunity to visit HFP and to provide information on individual prisoners of war not available at Hellfire Pass Interpretative Centre or elsewhere. Construction of this privately funded museum began in 2001 and it opened in January 2003 as the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre (TBRC).
An increasingly important part of the service offered to the families of former prisoners of war by TBRC is the ability to take people on private pilgrimages back to visit specific areas of the abandoned railway and recount many of the events that took place in those locations.
Because exploration and research into the railway are ongoing the further development of the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre remains an active and ongoing project. This includes detailed GPS mapping of the railway route so as to leave a permanent record of where the railway was, since much of it has been, and continues to be, destroyed by modern development.
Event venue & nearby stays
The Commissariat Store Museum, 115 William Street, Brisbane City, Australia
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