28 BENEATH HILL 60
Beneath Hill 60 (2010)
Synopsis
Adapted from war diaries by David Roach and directed by Jeremy Sims, Beneath
Hill 60 is an Australian war drama set during World War I. The film tells the
story of the 1st Australian Tunneling Com pany’s efforts to dig a series of tunnels
under neath Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front in order to plant
high- explosive mines meant to disrupt German defenses and aid a British offen-
sive in 1917.Background
Beneath Hill 60 owes its genesis to Ross J. Thomas, a mining engineer and World
War I history buff from Townsville, Queensland, Australia. In 1992 Thomas
chanced to discover the war diary of Capt. Oliver Holmes Woodward (1885–1966)
of the 1st Australian Tunneling Com pany, a WWI unit that helped to plant and
detonate 19 mines (totaling 447 tons of explosives) beneath German lines that
opened the Battle of Messines (7–14 June 1917) in Flanders, Belgium. The result-
ing explosion was immense—it blew the top off Wytschaete Ridge and killed an
estimated 10,000 German defenders— but did not result in a war- winning strate-
gic advantage as was hoped; the Allies took what was left of Hill 60, but the Ger-
mans retook it a few months later. Though the Hill 60 operation was not militarily
decisive, the hitherto unknown story of the tunnelers was the stuff of high drama.
Thomas eventually met with documentary director- producer Bill Leimbach (Gal-
lipoli: The Untold Stories) and quickly convinced him that Woodward’s story was
worthy of filmic treatment. Leimbach made Thomas executive producer, hired Jer-
emy Hartley Sims (Last Train to Freo) to direct a documentary, and hired David
Roach (Young Einstein) to write a screenplay based on Woodward’s diary, with addi-
tional research culled from Canberra’s Australian War Memorial Archives. During
the pre- production stage, the filmmakers deemed the material suitable for a feature-
length docudrama. By the end of 2008 they had cast the film and raised most of
what eventually became an 8.1 million AUD ($7.8 million USD) bud get. Screen
Australia, the government’s film funding agency, furnished 81 percent of the bud-
get, and vari ous Townsville businesses pledged the other 19 percent and also pro-
vided key filming locations and earth- moving equipment, gratis, and the army
supplied period artillery.Production
Under the working titles The Silence and The Silence Beneath, filming in and
around Townsville took place over a 40- day period (20 July–28 August 2009). A
crew led by production designer Clayton Jauncey and art director Sam Hobbs
transformed a sloping Townsville paddock into a section of the Western Front,
complete with more than 500 meters of trenches. For logistical and safety rea-
sons, the tunnel scenes were shot in above- ground simulated tunnels constructed
in a large shed.