The following article has puzzled me for some time. Writing in the Sunday Times, 25 June 1916, ‘Dorothy’ stated: “About 1860 there was an old renegade who lived in a ramshackle hut on the corner of Belgrave and Raglan Street, Manly, NSW, the site now being occupied by a small grocery business. In destroying his hut after his death, it was found to cover a cellar which was the start of a subterranean passage. This passage ended, it was found, in a dark fissure in the cliff some 200 yards from the start, and half-way along was a widening out of the tunnel, which formed a room, evidently used for storing etc. The fissure can still be seen by the observant in the lane opposite the oval entrance. Undoubtedly he was a smuggler, but what he smuggled is still in the dark. The proprietor of the shop would be interested to know that his cellar forms the original cellar, as I have been in it, and have seen traces of rough stonework put unskillfully together.” Presumably the lane opposite the oval entrance is Kangaroo Lane. In 1915 E H Millett’s grocer’s business was in Raglan Street adjacent to the Central Hall and Manly Methodist Church, roughly 200 yards from Kangaroo Lane. (It can be seen in a State Library photo, PXA 635/548-559.) This would have meant that the passage ran under the Belgrave Street/Raglan Street intersection, which seems pretty unlikely. Does anyone have any additional information about this secret passage?
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