Shell-damaged pot: residence of Mrs Maud McEachern, Bradley Avenue, Bellevue Hill

Steel cooking pot heavily distorted, torn and holed. The impact of the shell (or rubble) has forced the shape of a table- or stove- corner into the base of the pot and holed the wall in two places. A pair of suspension lugs on each side of the pot originally held a handle and one of the brass retainers still exists on one lug. Heavily corroded.

Cooking pot damaged by one of ten 140 mm shells fired from the deck gun of the Japanese submarine I-24 on 8 June 1942 while surfaced about 7 kilometres off the coast of Sydney. One shell tore through the back rooms of Mrs Maud McEachern's house but failed to explode - in fact only one of the ten shells exploded. Mrs McEachern lived in Bradley Avenue in the Sydney suburb of Bellevue Hill and the rooms, including the kitchen and the laundry, were wrecked by the dud shell as well as the rear section of the house next door. She related that she was in bed “but not asleep. Then I heard a whistling sound and next a thud. This was repeated, and when the third whistling sound came I heard a terrific explosion. The whole house shook with the impact. The rooms which had escaped damage were filled with dust. The ceilings in the remaining rooms fell in."

The aftermath was recorded by another resident of Bellevue Hill, Mr Charles Howard Percy Moseley, the day after the shelling (see image P11866.001). He lived at the corner of Fairweather and Vivian Streets in Bellevue Hill. He visited her and asked if he could take some images of the damage. Mrs McEachern was clearing out the debris from her house and Moseley asked if he could take the wrecked pot as a souvenir – as she had no further use for it, she readily agreed. Moseley told his son Richard that in response to the question of how she handled the attack, Mrs McEachern replied that she calmly turned off the gas (as prescribed in the APR training) and then found a safe place to hide. While he was talking to her, a unidentified photographer from the Department of Information visited to record the damage and Moseley also took a photo of him (see AWM image P11866.001). The images the DOI photographer took of the damaged house in Bradley Street are recorded as AWM images 012582 and 012593.

Charles Moseley worked as a fitter and machinist at a Factory in Zetland and his fiancée, Rita Neame, who worked for Tasman Radio making electronic parts for military radios, visited him that morning and also witnessed the damage.

Maud McEachern's son, Colin Malcolm McEachern, served in RANR during the war and was awarded as Distinguished Service Medal for coast watching in 1944.