Rod Beattie
TOUR GUIDE | KOKODA TREKS & TOURS
Born:
Gympie, Queensland, Australia. 17 July 1948.
Education:
- Primary education at Wolvi State School.
- Secondary education at Gympie State High School.
- Graduated from Queensland Institute of Technology, 1976 (Civil Engineering Design). Part time.
- Graduated from Darling Downs Institute of Technology, 1976 (Civil
- Engineering Construction). By correspondence
- Graduated from Gemmological Association of Australia, 1978.
Military Service:
- 6 years in Australian Army Reserve (1968 – 74). Three years in infantry and three years in engineers. Rank – Corporal.
Employment:
- 10 years working for Queensland Main Roads Department on road design and construction (1969 - 1979).
- 10 years operating own gem cutting and holesale business (1979 - 1989).
- 3 years working as a consultant on gem projects in Thailand, Vietnam and Laos (1990 – 1994)
- 18 years as Manager of the Commonwealth War Cemeteries in Thailand (1995 – 2013) - and 2½ years as Project Manager of Hellfire Pass Project (1996 - 1998) working part time.
- Since 2003 Founder and Research Director of Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, Kanchanaburi, Thailand. (T.B.R.C. Co. Ltd.)
In 1994, I 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 Prime Minister Mr. Paul Keating. Soon after I offered my services to the Australian Thai Chamber of Commerce to voluntarily maintain the short (400 metres) pathway into Hellfire Pass. I supervised the construction of a second concrete pathway leading to the northern end of HFP.
Having become involved with HFP I set out to learn more about the history of the railway. To better understand the railway I 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.
To give visitors a better understanding of the work done in building the railway I set out to clear a long section of the railway northwards from HFP. These first four and a half kilometers, which took more than a year to clear, were cleared only with the help of my wife, Thuy.
In 1995 I was appointed manager of the Commonwealth War Cemeteries in Thailand, working part time. In this position I met many people searching for information about relatives who worked or died on the railway. To help these people I began a worldwide search for original PoW records of deaths on the railway. TBRC still continues to search archives around the world for records of former prisoners of the Japanese.
In 1996 I was appointed Project Manager to oversee the construction of the HFP Memorial Interpretative Centre and permanent improvements to the walking trail. During this time we cleared another four kilometers of railway northwards from Compressor Cutting. This has since been abandoned and has reverted to jungle. The Australian Prime Minister, Mr. John Howard, opened the memorial on 24 April 1998. Subsequently more of the cleared railway has been abandoned so that as of 2022 only two and a half kilometres are still accessible.
In 1999 I 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. 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 former prisoners of war and/or their families 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 is 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.
Frank Taylor
OWNER/MANAGER, TOUR GUIDE and Tour Director | KOKODA TREKS & TOURS
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Neville Browning
TOUR GUIDE | KOKODA TREKS & TOURS
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