Fraser Commando School

The Fraser Commando School (FCS), Fraser Island, functioned as an important part of Australia’s Special Operations programme during World War II. Between October 1943 and August 1945 it trained over 900 personnel of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), the cover name for Special Operations Australia (SOA), the Australian version of the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). Skills taught, among others, included unarmed combat and physical training; jungle craft, folboats (canoes), demolitions and weapons training.

The site is located on the west side of Fraser Island about 1.6km south of Kingfisher Bay Resort and Village. There is an old boiler on the beach near the FCS site, which is spread between the remnants of McKenzie’s jetty and Beerilbee Creek in the south, to a hill just north of an area cleared for leading lights in the 1880s. The main camp site, most of which is located north of Beerilbee Creek, on the hill to the east of an access road, consists of a rectangle orientated southwest-northeast, with the building sites facing the northwest. Remnants include some concrete slabs, ceramic pipes, cuttings forming platforms for buildings or tents, building stumps, box drains, and possible latrine pits or foxholes around the periphery of the camp. Four corrugated iron water tanks on the brow of hill, and some telegraph poles, still existed in 1994. Visitors should take care not to further erode the building cuttings, or remove artefacts.