Hokesville, New South Wales

Hokesville (also known as Hoaxville) was a fake town in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia built during World War II as camouflage for a RAAF weapons storage site.

It was the location of a pre-existing large disused railway tunnel which the RAAF determined would be ideal for storing its stockpile of chemical weapons, including phosgene and mustard gas.

[6] Fears of reconnaissance missions or even air strikes from Japanese planes led to much effort being taken to disguise Hokesville as a functioning town.

[8] Once the war ended, the reality of Hokesville was revealed to the Australian public and photographers were invited to document the site.

[11][12] A remediation project ran from 2008 to 2010, revealing thousands of bomb cases, projectiles, fuses and other military ordnance in the soil.