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Devil's Elbow Road
The Main Roads Board reconstructed the area on Guildford Road, which was known as Devil’s Elbow, in September 1928, due to the turn “always being regarded as dangerous” to motorists. This involved constructing a new road alongside it, eliminating the old curves, using 1246 yards of sand to fill the road before a gravel surface was laid.
This road existed near the Sandringham Hotel and with a cost including repairs to the nearby main road, it was quoted at £12,009.
The asphalt was a glassy surface, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other and sand lining the sides of the road encouraged pedestrians to walk along it. The curves were described as “many turns that… would break a snake’s back trying to follow them”.
Low lying areas of the old Devil’s Elbow road were filled in and converted into a “wide swinging road” by the Main Roads Board, who then applied to the Lands Department to close it. It was then suggested that the triangle shaped block of land should be made into a park, sometime in the near future.
Whilst I’ve so far been unable to find a map pre-1929 which shows the exact location of Devil’s Cave, according to inherit, it was located in the area marked with a red border. Whilst inherit tends to have incorrect information from time to time, other reports stated it was located closely to Guildford Road, which would place it on the Maylands side of the River. Others have stated it was close to the Sandringham Hotel, which was on the river side of what we know today as Great Eastern Highway.
Incidents
Accidents were largely blamed on “reckless speeding by motor cyclists and motorists of the type who would create dangers on any road”. It was believed that reconstructing the road would prevent many fatal accidents, which had taken place in the years prior, although accidents had “grown in number with the increased volume of motor traffic”.
In 1928, an article published in The Daily News believed there was no other spot in Western Australia where more accidents occurred than at the hairpin bend of Devil’s Elbow on Guildford Road. It didn’t help that the road was badly lit at night, as mentioned in the inquest of 50 year old George Cook, who’d died on 9 December 1927 from a fractured skull and laceration of the brain. It was suspected he’d been hit by a car whilst walking on the side of the road in the vicinity of Devil’s Elbow, something that appears to never have been proven.
A motorcyclist was reported to have been killed in the same location as George, the following day.
A few months later, ex Police Sergeant John Joseph Wilson was driving his vehicle towards Devil’s Elbow, when a speeding truck with no lights, approached it from the other direction. Mr Wilson was forced to swerve to the left to avoid a collision with the truck, causing his car to skid and crash into a tree, leaving him with a fracture above his left knee.
Accidents had been occurring for years at Devil’s Elbow. In December 1926, a truck carrying 20 passengers overturned as it attempted to pass through Devil’s Elbow. A number of people were injured including 20 year old Thelma Gordon, who had to have her right leg amputated below the knee. The truck had been carrying Perth City Council employees and was returning from Glen Forrest, where they’d had their annual cricket match and picnic. The driver was seen to have travelled so fast, that it would’ve been impossible to negotiate the bends without an accident.
Gazetting the New Road
During the April 1929 meeting of the Road Board, gazetting the newly reconstructed Devil’s Elbow road was seen as a priority, as speeding road users could not be charged until it was gazetted as a road.
Peppermint Grove
Devil’s Elbow is also the name for a cave in Peppermint Grove, that’s long since been sealed up.
