More Stories From Subiaco... (1954).
The article is from Trove, the database of the National Library of Australia. No copyright infringement intended.
Sunday Times, 5 July 1931.
SUBIACO.
The following item In a Perth paper last week caused a commotion:
"SUBIACO HOLY CAVE.
CLIFF SPLITTING IS DANGER.
"The Sacro Speco (Holy Cave) of St. Benedict at Subiaco, near Rome, is in great danger owing to a tendency of the cliff to split and crumble away. Bits of rock sometimes fall close to pilgrims while they are at prayer in the chapels.
The teacher in a Subiaco (WA) school took advantage of the above item of Italian news to re-tell the story of how the now swanky suburb of Perth came to be named after the monastery in Italy.
Soon after she had finished the story she dismissed the class for the day the children going home.
Soon afterwards a small boy rushed into his parents' house in Bagot-road and told his mother excitedly that there was shortly to be an earthquake at Subiaco.
Mother immediately got from him further particulars as to the monastery cave, and told a neighbor that there was a cave full of monkeys at West Subiaco.
The next recipient of the inflated rumor passed it on as being something to do with a man near Monger's lake being hit with a monkey wrench, the story about cliffs splitting and crumbling distorted into the Subiaco sewerage tunnel having fallen in and im-prisoned a number of navvies.
A little later on it became a sand slide at Wembley, while towards evening a tram conductor out there asked a City Beach "sharry" driver was there anything in the rumor that the tearooms out there had been washed away.
