Thread: Mystery plotters attempted to assassinate the Queen in Australia, former detective sa

Mystery plotters attempted to assassinate the Queen in Australia, former detective says

MYSTERY plotters attempted to kill the Queen during an Australian visit and it was only luck that prevented it.

A retired police detective revealed to the Lithgow Mercury and London’s Daily Mail that details of the conspiracy were kept quiet so as not to embarrass the Australian Government at the time.

Former Detective Superintendent Cliff McHardy has sensationally claimed the Queen and Prince Philip were travelling across the Blue Mountains towards Orange on April 29 1970 when plotters attempted to derail their train.

The now retired 81-year-old police officer claimed a wooden log was placed on the railway tracks ahead of the monarch's train but failed when it simply wedged under the wheels and slowed the train down until it eventually stopped at a crossing.

Mr McHardy, who now lives in Glenbrook, said he decided to break his long silence on the case to prompt people to come forward and own up.

It is understood there is no record of the alleged event but the report by the former Lithgow police station chief caused a wild frenzy with the British Fleet Street press inundating Buckingham Palace with demands for details.

A spokeswoman for the Palace this morning declined to comment.

"We are not commenting on an alleged plot that happened 40 years ago," the spokeswoman said.

It is believed the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh remain oblivious to the alleged assassination attempt to this day. There is no official report of the incident in the UK or Australia.

Mr McHardy said the Federal Government of the day ordered the gag on the attempt to derail what was a successful and very popular royal tour Down Under.

He said detectives at the time interviewed a number of people including railway workers and known Australian IRA sympathisers but no arrests were ever made.

Mr McHardy said he believed the train did not derail on that winding cutting through the mountains near Lithgow because it was moving unusually slow.

"'If it had had reached its normal speed it would have plunged off the tracks and into an embankment," he said before describing how the line had been checked just an hour before by a 'sweeper' train.

"The log had been moved onto the line in darkness, by one or two people who had prior knowledge of the area. Vandals couldn't have been involved because there's no pub nearby, so you couldn't put it down to hoodlum behaviour. It was pre-planned."

He told the Lithgow Mercury, which broke his story yesterday, he was only speaking now to "prompt the people responsible to come forward and own up".

The British press yesterday declared it was possibly a plot by republicans.

But Mr McHardy added: "We never came up with any decent suspects because if we interviewed people we seemed to be talking in riddles. We couldn't disclose what our enquiries were about,' he said.

The identity of the culprit has always haunted the retired officer who bemoans that he, or she, was "the one that got away".

"It was one of the big regrets of my police service," he says.

He added optimistically: "Perhaps now that the story has gone public someone might come forward."

Mystery plotters attempted to assassinate the Queen in Australia, former detective says | National News | News.com.au