Inspecting a blast hole, Degraves Street Subway Flinders Street Railway Station, C.1953
“I thought bombs had dropped in the subway," Mrs Cora Hunt said after an explosion yesterday at Flinders st station. Mrs Hunt, 33, and her daughter were two of eight people slightly injured when blasting operations for the Degraves st subway blew a hole 2ft square in the centre subway beneath the St Kilda platform. Jagged pieces of rock and tiling flew along the subway for 60 yards, but only a few people were in it at the time - 8.51am. Mrs Hunt said: "We ran along the subway while the bangs were still echoing. "Stones and pieces of tiles rumbled behind us. "I had run 50 yards before I realised I had been hit in the ankle. Two holes were blown in a skylight in a wall of the St Kilda platform, showering glass into the train from Essendon. Robert Dicken, porter, who was on the St Kilda platform, said the blast threw the telephone in the station office off the hook. Workmen said that a blow-back in a gelignite detonator charge in the Degraves st subway tunnel caused the explosion. Five charges blow into rock, but the last apparently fired backwards. The workmen did not know a charge had gone wrong until they re-entered the tunnel a few minutes after the detonation. The Argus Newspaper.