The Hellfire Pass Memorial, 80km from Kanchanaburi, is about the railway, rather than soldiers' individual stories, Beattie explains. It's also quite remote and many veterans can't get there, so (naturally) he decided to build a museum in Kanchanaburi.

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDc4sCNiLMJGXEIOTVZpdH-TYeZs0zXrJiZjf9EeE6UopJVapfZGaPoBzsOkznup8_uKvnnyWOt_BbX3lRHOCDTERHtECP1attVqC-pnchGr2Q67RWvicWi4nEW_ce2BqyYmCGBEcJxLU/s1600-h/345437.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fd="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2FzGj9ZEf309gcT74spp-4_T4MGUcbHRIfA1n3zlmpBBDCAFbBtQtz87cAP4VxEy0EjkWO-FzmLiKiiOqn22D-F_sF010VZpPn2qRZa0uyPGyfcjYVbx-CRo2h6ZR1dZ1_zfp_Hi6ak/s200-r/345437.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Many</span> expat Australians gradually abandon their native land, adopt local customs and drift into an easy life. Not Rod Beattie. This outback type (born in Gympie) has lived for 13 years in Kanchanaburi, Thailand 128km west of Bangkok and the site of the Bridge on the River Kwai. But see the weathered face of the khaki-clad bloke talking to visitors at his Thai-Burma Railway museum, and you could be in any Queensland country town. Let him fix you with his strangely hypnotic eyes and launch into a story and you are lost, captive to an unlikely Scheherazade. He always has one more story to tell about the Japanese ''Death Railway'' and the allied prisoners who built it under such appalling conditions.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBSpBgHfL3fOzPOdcSK5OMSYn3hBD-vcsd-eqUYoOXOCe2exRjZRANoV1ZBSvhsdYKlfdrR36MME7KKUmmosFMb1Fl8RL4C-ZAXTZLefhQO61DtjUX3_gcfpRuAd-P1TLAOzgRdRpvTK8/s1600-h/345438.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fd="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5HaJBhzexEMIYg0nKFyF9q1yY1qv-i5QU-dNJoHS32y1BCq2hQwk69WMwPMPlP26oPUH6L_nj3Ngv6HNIPojoAS-zVuwuOrR-Aw15Wx7OGlhWhYzNa_A9_-UwnrmpuDsUFjCmz-zZbD8/s200-r/345438.jpg" /></a></div>Beattie first came to Kanchanaburi as a sapphire mining consultant, but became engrossed by the railway. Exploring Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, he met Australians trying to trace mates or relatives. Moved by their attempts, and intrigued by their lack of solid information, he decided to help. Not content to make a few queries or check out the odd dusty diary, in 1995 Beattie set off to walk the entire unmapped 415km length of the railway, battling through overgrown jungle and over mountain passes. In all, he spent five years tracing the railway through Thailand and Burma, locating campsites where Australian soldiers worked and frequently died of disease or exhaustion. When he set off, little was known about the fate of many of these soldiers, but by the end of Beattie's determined trek, he had accounted for every one of the 2661 Aussie casualties, finding the place and cause of death for all but three. Beattie downplays this achievement, citing his background as a civil engineer and onetime soldier, but how hard was it, really? ''Very,'' he admits. ''The records are scattered all over the place. It was a case of creating two lists, one of prisoner of war deaths from original wartime records and another of present-day burial or commemoration sites. The two had to be compared and combined so I now have a record of [every] Australian reported as dying on the railway.''<br /> While many Aussies harbour vague plans to visit the place where a relative served or died overseas. Melbournian Doug Ogden, whose father died on the Thai-Burma border, actually did it in 1995, with Beattie's help. It wasn't easy, he concedes. ''Most of my life I couldn't talk to anybody about my father. I couldn't hear The Last Post without almost gagging, choking. There's a lot of fear about going back to where your father died, because you're going where your father was treated badly. It's like visiting a crime scene.''<br /> Ogden had got as far as Kanchanaburi when he encountered Beattie. Even then Beattie knew the area better than anyone, says Ogden. ''It's his passion in life; actually, 'obsession' is a more accurate description. Rod's determined to ensure that this part of Australian history is never forgotten and to this end he works like a man on a mission. Rod can talk on a range of subjects but always before long he is back to 'the railway'.''<br /> Beattie took Ogden into the jungle himself. ''It was only with Rod's local knowledge that we came upon what we believe was Kami Sonkurai, where my father died. This was very emotional. To imagine my father may have been on this ground and that he may have even touched some of the sleepers still remaining, caused great elation and sadness. It will always be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.''<br /> Ogden returned with other 2/29 Battalion families for a memorial dedication, with Beattie as guide.<br /> As Ogden says, ''The families had to go, to find out, because no-one told them anything about their fathers. It's important for people to actually touch the ground, see where their father spent the war, or died. Even if he came back, often he wouldn't talk about it. They had to understand their father's behaviour some people got back to society, but they were not part of society, some became a bit violent, or drank.''<br /> Beattie often meets people like Ogden. ''The other day I spotted someone showing a piece of paper to my head gardener [Beattie works part-time for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Kanchanaburi] so I went to help him. I asked the relationship and was told 'my father'''. The man had known little of his father's fate. He knew he died in the Far East, and recently he found on the CWGC website that he was commemorated in Kanchanaburi.''I was able to tell Peter that his father died a few hundred metres from where we were standing. By the time I took Peter across to the museum and copied the wartime documents recording his father's movements on the railway, his death and burial, he was stunned into silence. The reaction of people I take to the actual camps or cemetery sites is even more emotional.''<br /> Beattie clearly finds this work satisfying but it wasn't enough. <br /> The Hellfire Pass Memorial, 80km from Kanchanaburi, is about the railway, rather than soldiers' individual stories, Beattie explains. It's also quite remote and many veterans can't get there, so (naturally) he decided to build a museum in Kanchanaburi. Undaunted by broken promises of government assistance, Beattie went it alone, adding galleries and displays as money trickled in. He insisted on authenticity. He makes the point that the precisely-scaled model of the railway mirrors the railway's actual compass orientation and the rocks and rails in the construction displays are real. The 2cm-high diorama figures are individually sculpted from Dutch POW drawings. All diaries and personal effects on show are genuine, found by Beattie or donated. <br /> And help has come form some unlikely quarters. Japanese engineer Major Renichi Sugano (who carried a secret camera while working on the building of the railway) has visited the museum three times and donated 300 photographs. He has told Beattie that he feels the museum gives a balanced account. Japanese visitors do come to the museum, though not in great numbers. Beattie says those who do come are shocked, sometimes in tears, when they learn what happened here. ''We have a book specifically for Japanese visitors to record their thoughts. Some write half a page or more. The basic theme of the comments is 'We had no idea this happened. We are so sorry'.''What strikes you on meeting Beattie is his passion for the cause and his concern for the people he helps. And his sheer intensity, as Doug Ogden testifies. ''One time we were staying with him the night before Anzac Day. It got to be 12o'clock and my son said, 'Mate, I've had enough, I'm going to bed' because we all had to be up at 3am for the dawn service. But Rod is still bashing on and then it is 2am, and then the next thing you know, it's 3o'clock and Rod is still talking.''<br /> Intense, maybe, but this man Beattie and his museum are the real thing. Beattie is a link between visitors and their comrades or relatives, between Japan, Australia and Thailand and between the past and the present. In fact, he is a far more authentic bridge than the better-known edifice outside, which is there to satisfy tourists. Not even the river is really called Kwai, but that's another story.Thirteen years on, he remains a quintessential Queenslander. Straight up. No bull. He deflects all talk of persistence or obsession and insists that the motivation for his work is just ''giving peace of mind to people.'' Which he does. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgznMg0zW1HuF071SvKLYhT0VQuptyf9Mwy3t8EvH-3hA5IFQd0Coc0zAXt9aLGaUDnN2KFPHTZV_8MI6aDM-zEc4fMTBuGUVNoRADt0SI5s8LFLRyOYnvdEVdn1zSuhcNqxDUJLZ39hvQ/s1600-h/345439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fd="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9stD43b7KuunZVuIY6L8KWiW3GujKhv7ZLNqHQz-JjBN5UNy5GckubWm6tzCeJqoO92QokOuDC7-0N8VmlYEn1ex0yi2ER-xA6ZNTYmgqwldx1hsx0i1ZO9Yi4Kr1QdSwWpD-2LIum_s/s200-r/345439.jpg" /></a></div>

The Hellfire Pass Memorial, 80km from Kanchanaburi, is about the railway, rather than soldiers' individual stories, Beattie explains. It's also quite remote and many veterans can't get there, so (naturally) he decided to build a museum in Kanchanaburi.

Many expat Australians gradually abandon their native land, adopt local customs and drift into an easy life. Not Rod Beattie. This outback ...

Read more »