The sun is shining brightly and but for a few streaks of white, the sky is deep blue. Rounded green hills highlighted with pine tree windbreaks stretch to the horizon.

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In the surrounding paddocks sheep are playing follow the leader and cows are contentedly mooing.

It's as idyllic a country scene as you'll find in our region.

As I clamber up the side of the closest hill with property owner Colin Dennett, he points out several small curious openings that lead into the side of large Tellytubby-like domes.

There's four in total. Each almost completely buried in the side of the hill. You only notice them when you are up close.

But this isn't child's play. Far from it. Colin has invited me for a sneak peek at an emergency fuel store facility that was built under cloak and dagger during the dark days of World War II.

"Following Japanese attacks on our coast, in early 1942 the United States urged the Australian government to construct emergency inland fuel stores for the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] at 32 key locations around the country", Colin reveals.

"It was estimated at the time that 20 million imperial gallons [about 90 million litres] of fuel would be needed to keep the RAAF in the air for six months should Australia be invaded and supply lines cut."

The total cost of construction across all sites was more than 1 million pounds, with the Americans contributing about two-thirds. And this one here at Lake Bathurst, less than an hours' drive north-east from Canberra, was the closest one to the national capital.

It wasn't easy work either, with Walter Gervens, a silo builder from near Yass, brought in to help. And boy did his team do a good job. Not only did the site need to be prepared, the tanks carefully constructed from reinforced concrete and then camouflaged under vegetation and matting, but the entrance to each tank also needed to be protected with concrete bomb/blast deflectors which are still standing today.

Colin leads me into the access tunnel that leads about 10 metres into the side of the hill and to the gate valves of the closest tank. We can just make out number '3' in faded paint on the concrete wall. "I've been told that the numbers on the tanks weren't simply in order as you moved through the site, rather they were purposefully jumbled to confuse potential invaders," Colin explains.

Thankfully the only interlopers we need to worry about today are the fairy martins (Petrochelidon ariel) which have built their mud nests in large numbers on the ceiling of the tunnel. Regular readers may recall it was this same species of birds that bombarded me on my recent exploration of the abandoned Colinton Railway Tunnel near Bredbo.

Given their age, the steel gate valves are in surprisingly good condition. Oh, and there's absolutely no smell of........

© Canberra Times