A Rock And a Hard Place: 'Bob' Wake in Profile

Bob Wake: A Career In Profile

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Podcast Dossier: Rock and a Hard Place (R.F.B. Wake)

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Host: Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are cracking open a file that, and I'm not exaggerating here, it feels like it should still be sealed with red wax and mark burn after reading. It really does.

Host: We usually get this polite polished version of Australian history, right? Yeah. Textbook version where everything's a clean linear timeline leading to the, you know, the neat formation of ASIO in 1949. That is the official narrative.

Host: And it's comforting. It suggests that our institutions were built by sensible people making sensible decisions. But the documents we have in front of us, specifically the Robert Frederick Bird Wake Archive Dossier, they paint a completely different picture.

Host: How so? It's messy. It's dangerous. And it's full of what we call forensic realities that just completely contradict the public record.

Host: We're talking about one man in particular, Bob Wake. They called him the rare bird. Yes. And looking at this dossier, he wasn't just some bureaucrat sitting behind a mahogany desk. This was a pioneer, an operator in a landscape that sounds more like a noir spy thriller than a government department. That's the key context.

Host: We're talking secret paramilitary networks, shifting loyalties, a time when the government didn't always know who the good guys were. So our mission for this deep dive is to sort of step into that world. Exactly. We need to be forensic historians here. We're not just recounting a biography of Bob Wake. We're investigating a very specific and honestly a very unsettling possibility: The existence of a deep state in Australia during the 1930s and 40s.

Host: Deep state. Okay, that's a loaded term. It gets thrown around a lot these days. And we have to be very precise. When we talk about a deep state in this historical context, we mean a state within a state. We're looking at unelected power centres, police commissioners, generals, business elites who are operating secret armies. Like the New Guard and the White Army. Exactly. Groups operating in direct opposition to the elected government.

Host: And Bob Wake. He was the man standing right on that fault line, right between the rule of law and these secret armies. And at the centre of it all is this massive conflict between Wake and Sir Thomas Blamey. A huge figure. But before we get to him, let's set the scene. We have to go back to 1931, the Great Depression, social upheaval, and in New South Wales, you have the rise of the New Guard.

Host: Correct. And the scale of this is just, it's often forgotten. The New Guard wasn't just a few grumpy guys in a shed. This was a right-wing paramilitary organisation commanded by Colonel Eric Campbell. They claimed to have 50,000 members. That is an army. It was an army. They were organised. They were drilling. They were angry.

Host: And here's the crucial data point for our investigation. At this time, 1931, the official intelligence services were almost entirely fixated on the Red Menace. So everyone in power is looking left at the communists. Almost everyone. The police, the military establishment. They saw the New Guard as their sort of chaps. Anti-communist, patriotic. So the authorities just turned a blind eye. But not Bob Wake. No. Wake was looking right. He's the one guy realising that a private army of 50,000 men might actually be a threat to the state, regardless of their politics.

Host: And that leads us to one of the most audacious pieces of tradecraft in the entire dossier, the infiltration of the New Guard headquarters. Wake didn't have wiretaps or satellites. He used human nature. He identified a vulnerability window. He just watched the routine of the office secretary at the New Guard HQ in Sydney. He noticed a pattern. When she went to lunch, she didn't lock the door properly.

Host: So he invited her to lunch. He invited her to a cafe immediately below her office. Oh, that's the genius of it. He didn't take her across town. He kept the travel time to zero. He literally took the obstacle out for a sandwich downstairs. Then halfway through the meal, he excuses himself. I'll be back in a moment. He runs upstairs, uses the unlocked door, a human error he had totally anticipated, and gets access to the files. That is incredibly bold.

Host: High risk. But it also makes you ask the forensic question the dossier raises. Was he doing this all on his own? A rogue operator? Or was this quietly sanctioned by naval intelligence to monitor a movement that, frankly, a lot of people in the military secretly supported? Plausible deniability. If he's caught, he's just a trespasser. Exactly.

Host: That brings us to 1932 and a specific document that changes the whole tone of this story. The Street Fighting Manual. Mobile training, fourth week street fighting, issued May 2, 1932. It outlined offensive tactics for urban warfare, specifically how to neutralise the police during an insurrection. It was a blueprint for a coup in Sydney. And Wake gets his hands on this manual. And he reports it to the Director of Naval Intelligence within 96 hours of it being issued. 96 hours in 1932. No internet, no fax machines.

Host: The timing is so suspicious. Because just 11 days after this manual comes out, the NSW Premier Jack Lang is dismissed by the Governor. The famous dismissal. The New Guard hated Lang. They were gearing up to overthrow him. But when he was dismissed legally, the government remained surprisingly calm. Was that calm a result of Wake's intelligence? Did the government know, thanks to Wake, exactly what the New Guard was planning? It's a very strong possibility. Did Bob Wake single-handedly prevent a coup just by letting the grown-ups know what was coming?

Host: But Wake didn't just make enemies on the far right. This is where we have to talk about Sir Thomas Blamey. The antagonist of our story. Sir Thomas Blamey is a titan of Australian history. Field marshal. War hero. But the Wake dossier paints a very different, much darker picture of him. On the one hand, he's the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police. On the other, the dossier identifies him as the secret commander of the White Army, also known as the League of National Security.

Host: Blamey is serving the elected government, but he's building a private force to act independently if he decides the government is failing. And this is where the friction with Wake comes from. Wake represented the professional intelligence community, loyal to the crown, loyal to the elected government. Blamey represented the old soldier network, loyal to their own idea of the nation, and willing to step outside the law to protect it.

Host: Blamey accused Wake of all sorts of things, claiming he wore medals he wasn't entitled to, lying about his naval service. These charges were formally laid in 1943. Middle of World War II. Blamey is running the Australian army. And he takes time out to prosecute an intelligence officer over medals. It seems petty, but it was a targeted strike. If you can prove the spy is a liar, you discredit his intelligence. But Justice Jeffrey Reed found Wake competent and innocent. The charges were baseless.

Host: And that network wasn't just in Victoria. Raymond Lean, the SA police commissioner, he mobilised special constables. The dossier posits Lean in SA, Blamey in Victoria, and Campbell in NSW as three pillars of a coordinated stay-behind network. A coordinated effort to physically control the nation, no matter what the ballot box says. And Wake was the guy watching them. No wonder they wanted him gone.

Host: 1941. The world is at war, and Bob Wake disappears. His official military file records nil overseas service. But on August 20th, 1941, he was ordered to Singapore in mufti, carrying passports for Thailand and the Netherlands East Indies under the pseudonym, "Hereward". The evidence suggests high-level technical reconnaissance, surveying aviation strips, signals infrastructure. He was mapping the battlefield before the battle.

Host: He was meeting people. He was interacting with American intelligence officers in 1941. Before Pearl Harbour. Wake was likely working with precursors to the OSS. Is this the true beginning of the U.S.-Australian intelligence alliance? It suggests the relationship was forged in the field out of pure necessity. And he wrote a preparedness report. Knowing what we know now about the fall of Singapore in 1942, you have to wonder... If Wake's report had been acted upon... could it have altered the outcome?

Host: The war ends. Between 1948 and 1952, a new group surfaces. The Association. Blamey again. Essentially the White Army rebooted for the Cold War. And where is Wake? He's the first operations director of the newly formed ASIO. But he's caught in the middle. He's fighting the old guard of the police who are still loyal to these networks. He's fighting a civil war inside his own filing cabinets.

Host: In 1950, Bob Wake suffered a complete nervous breakdown. Heartbreaking. The dossier attributes it to the cumulative trauma and this relentless pressure of being the only honest broker in a corrupt system. His widow, Elizabeth, said he spent his life in the shadows even when the state refused to acknowledge him. He was erased from the files and eventually the weight of it all just collapsed him.

Host: We see a man who started by tricking a secretary to lunch and ended up mapping the defence of the Pacific, all while fighting a secret war against his own bosses. We see a man committed to facts over politics. It really re-frames how we think about that era. Was Bob Wake the only man who truly understood the danger of a deep state operating from within? And was that terrible realisation the thing that ultimately destroyed him? That is a heavy thought, but a necessary one. Thank you for walking us through this investigation.

Host: My pleasure. It's a history we need to know. And thank you for listening to The Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.

Being honest about this, it must be acknowledged that the history of Australian Intelligence agencies has been often sanitized in a somewhat linear fashion leading to the formation of ASIO in 1949. However, the archival record of Robert Frederick Bird (Bob) Wake suggests that a far more complex and fractured reality existed.

Looking beyond the "spy" tropes the question is: Was Wake merely a government officer, or was he a foundational pioneer navigating a landscape of shifting loyalties and secret paramilitary networks that operated outside the law? Was he faced with the ongoing battle between extreme left and extreme right that we see now almost 100 years on?

The New Guard Infiltration: Strategic Necessity or Institutional Overreach? (1931–1932)

In 1931, the 'New Guard' an extreme right wing organisation based in New South Wales, claimed 50,000 members under the command of Colonel Eric Campbell. While domestic police and intelligence services were largely fixated on the "Red Menace," posed by the left wing and Soviet style Communism, Bob Wake focused his attention on this right-wing paramilitary structure. Let's examine this theory.

The Breach and a "Vulnerability Window"

Wake’s 1931 infiltration of the New Guard headquarters in Sydney was achieved through a simple exploitation of human interaction and routine. He identified that the office secretary for the New Guard took a consistent lunch break, armed with that information, Wake created a "blind spot." He invited the secretary to lunch, and the location was at a cafe immediately below her office premises. He removed the gatekeeper from the office. During the lunch, Wake excused himself for a few minutes and, knowing her habit of leaving the office door unlocked, he ran up the stairs to her office and was able to acquire documents of great value to the intelligence services.

Was this a solo "rogue" operation, the act of an overly enthusiastic investigator or was this sanctioned at the highest levels of Naval Intelligence to keep tabs on a movement that many in the military secretly supported?

That act raised a question. If a major, and secret, paramilitary organization’s security could be compromised by a single lunch invitation, what does this tell us about the professionalism of the New Guard’s leadership?

The Harvest: The New Guard's "Street Fighting" Manual

The recovery of the "Mobile Training - Fourth Week - Street Fighting" manual on May 2, 1932, remains one of the most significant retrievals in Australian counter-intelligence history. A stroke of brilliance and not a small amount of luck.

With the benefit of hindsight we can create a timeline. Wake reported this manual to the Director of Naval Intelligence within 96 hours of its issuance. Does this suggest that Wake had already established a sophisticated human intelligence (HUMINT) network within the Guard, or was he physically present at the moment of distribution? It is known from Archive records that his name was mentioned as being 'available' to infiltrate the New Guard but the actual hard evidence that states that he did that is proving to be elusive.

The manual itself outlined offensive tactics for urban warfare and the neutralization of police in the event of an insurrection. When Jack Lang, Premier of New South Wales, was dismissed 11 days later, how much of the government's calm response was predicated on the tactical data Wake had extracted? It raises the question: Did Wake single-handedly prevent a paramilitary coup in Sydney?

The Blamey Question: A Conflict of Duty or a Clash of Ideologies?

The relationship between Wake and the later to be 'Sir' Thomas Blamey was a notoriously fraught one, culminating in a series of legal and professional clashes during the war years. Wake was accused of claiming previous service in the Navy and of wearing medals to which he was not entitled. The details of this accusation will be discussed in the Somerton Secrets book. Suffice to say that despite the claims being established as mostly true, Wake was cleared and found innocent.

To understand this friction, we have to consider the question of personal animosity and look toward the concept of the possibility of a 'State within a State.' The 'Deep State' as current parlance would describe it.

The Commissioner Had Dual Roles

It's a matter of historical record that Blamey, while serving as Chief Commissioner of the Victoria Police, was apparently also the secret commander of the 'White Army' (AKA the League of National Security). This group was based in the Australian State of Victoria and to an extent it mirrored the New Guard based in New South Wales; it was composed of conservative elites and senior army officers.

Did Blamey view Wake’s "unusual anti-fascist" career as a direct threat to his own Victorian power base? Why did Blamey level charges against Wake in 1943, only for Justice Geoffrey Reed to find Wake 'competent and innocent' of the charges laid against him? Could it be that this an attempt by the military establishment to purge an officer who had demonstrated a unique ability to penetrate right-wing secret societies? Once again the evidence to support that view remains elusive.

The South Australian Connection

While Raymond Leane as Commissioner led the South Australian Police with an iron fist, his relationship to the paramilitary movements of the era remains a subject of intense scrutiny in the context of the upcoming 'Somerton Secrets' book.

Although no formal membership card links Leane to the New South Wales New Guard, his mobilization of 3,000 'special constables' during the 1928 strikes and his leadership of the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) represent a shared institutional DNA. The later to be formed New Guard was to introduce a similar group of men.

Is it possible that Leane in South Australia, Blamey in Victoria, and Campbell, the leader of the New Guard in NSW, represented three pillars of a single, coordinated conservative 'stay-behind' type network in the event of a Communist takeover? Or perhaps to physically prevent such a takeover?

These men all moved in similar circles of "Old Soldier" senior officer networks and possibly secret societies. Was Wake monitoring Leane with the same professional, forensic intensity he applied to Campbell?

An International Aspect, Singapore 1941

Wake’s 1941 mission to Singapore is perhaps the most questioned and yet well documented, phase of his career. It marks his transition from domestic security and policing to the skilled situation analyst in a "semi-military" capacity.

The 'Hereward' pseudonym

On August 22, 1941, Wake was ordered to Singapore in "mufti" (plain clothes), carrying passports for Thailand and the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). This is a recorded fact and I have personally viewed the official documentation.

How come Wake’s official military file record "Nil" overseas service for a period when he was clearly operating in high-risk zones? Was the mission so sensitive, likely involving the assessment of British and Dutch defensive weaknesses that it required the total erasure of his presence from official accounting? The records I have seen suggest that to be true; Wake produced a detailed 'Preparedness' report.

What was the nature of Wake’s interactions with American intelligence officers? If Wake was operating alongside the precursors to the OSS in 1941, does this mark the true beginning of the US-Australian intelligence pivot, occurring years before the formal post-war alliances? Did he continue his personal association with OSS officers post war?

Having viewed an 'onion-skin' report and the 'Little Blue Book' it suggests a high degree of technical reconnaissance. Was Wake surveying aviation strips and signals infrastructure that would later prove critical during the Japanese advance? Could this knowledge if acted upon, have prevented the fall of Singapore in February 1942?

An Ending..

The forensic career trail of Bob Wake concludes with a medical and professional tragedy. In 1950, he suffered a complete nervous breakdown, attributed to the 'stress of wartime intelligence service.'

His breakdown was quite possibly a result of the combination of physical dangers in Singapore, his unending monitoring of continuing right wing activities in Australia and the monitoring of Soviet subversive groups within Australia or was it the cumulative weight of internal politics? Wake was a confidant to Dr. H.V. Evatt and the first Operations Director member of ASIO. He was caught between the old guard of the CIB and a new, more aggressive anti-communist security architecture. Following his retirement, he went on to become an advisor to Doc Evatt.

The 1979 statutory declaration by his widow, Elizabeth Wake, serves as a final, poignant piece of evidence. It corrects the official record and confirms that the "Rare Bird" had indeed spent his life in the shadows, even when the state refused to acknowledge his service.

The Association

The conclusion of WWII did not end the paramilitary tradition in Australia. Between 1948 and 1952, a new entity surfaced, known simply as 'The Association.' Led by Sir Thomas Blamey and senior figures like H.E. "Spadge" Woodcock, The Association was a secret 'stay-behind' defence force designed to mobilize in the event of a communist uprising, shades of the 1930s New Guard and White Army.

How much of the "internal politics" involving Bob Wake in his final years was driven by his opposition to these unauthorized, secret armies? If Wake was investigating The Association with the same rigor he applied to the New Guard, it would explain the intensity of the efforts to discredit him.

Did the Association effectively represent a 'state within a state' that operated with the tacit approval of many high-ranking officials? For a man like Wake, who believed in the formal, technical application of intelligence, this must have represented the ultimate challenge and a possible betrayal of the service he helped build.

The Forensic Record of a Spymaster

The evidence from Archives allows these questions to be posed. Robert Frederick Bird Wake was a man who understood the mechanics of power and the dangers of those who sought to wield it from the shadows. Whether he was compromising filing cabinets in Sydney or surveying the Pacific in 'mufti', his career was defined by a commitment to the facts and to truths over any prevailing political winds.

Here is one final, haunting question: Was Bob Wake the only man in the intelligence community who truly understood the danger of a potential 'Deep State' operating from within? And was it that knowledge which ultimately lead to his professional and personal undoing? Was he the man in the right place at the right time? I think we can say with confidence that his presence and the work that he undertook undoubtedly helped shape Australia's modern intelligence services.

The support and access given to Archive materials given by the Fryer Library, Visiting Researcher and  Post Graduate Study area at UQ, St. Lucia is gratefully acknowledged.

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The Tamam Shud blog is dedicated to uncovering the forensic realities of the Somerton Man case. Our mission is not to speculate, but to reconstruct the events of 1948 using primary documents, scientific modelling, and expert analysis. To ensure the integrity of this research, we rely solely on verifiable sources and citations, strictly excluding anonymous blog comments and forum speculation from our data.