Jumping Jacks - Hawea (Guv) Grey

Extract from interview with Claire Hall, 14 December 2007

Reproduced with permission of Hawea (Guv) Grey

Australian ngineers with 'Jumping Jack' mine

What characterised the jumping jacks?

When you stood on it, the moment you stepped off it had a shot underneath so when you stepped on it here, you set off an explosion over here. That explosion pulled this part up and out of the ground. Once it was out of the ground that exploded.

In the middle?

Yeah all of this exploded in a diameter and killed everybody, well did damage, within that range. And that's why they called in the jumping jack because it actually jumped up and then blew out.

There must've been a fair amount of vigilance, or even hyper vigilance when you were out on patrol about coming across these mines, because they were fairly widespread weren't they?

Yeah but it's hard to be vigilant against something that's almost impossible to see, because all there is something about as big as that on my glasses (about 2mm wide) and there's three of them sticking out of the ground. That's almost impossible to see, and they were camouflaged with leaves and things like that. But the vigilance was more on the humans that put them there. If they're around then probably these things are as well.