Under its leafy tree canopy Potts Point has provided shade for local residents and it has also cover for some cold war international espionage. Scenes have been reminiscent of early James Bond movies and have gripped the nation.

In 1954 within the blue façade of Cahors, 117 MacLeay Street, Potts Point, a Russian Agent and also the third secretary of the Soviet embassy in Canberra, Vladimir Petrov and his wife, Edvodokia, herself a high-ranking colonel in the Russian KGB, plotted to provide information about Australian intelligence to their Russian commanders in Moscow.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) bugged them inside Cahors’ third floor units which was packed with listening equipment. ASIO set up operations in two adjacent units to the Petrov’s unit.

They took advantage of Mr Petrov’s fondness for fine food, spirits and women plied him with oysters, whisky and Kings Cross prostitutes.

He became a double agent and provided some valuable information about Russian intelligence operations and other spies, even if sometimes unreliable, both here and overseas, to ASIO, the American CIA and British MI6.

He was then persuaded to defect to Australia. However, the Russian KGB tried to take back Mrs Petrov. A widely-circulated photo of Mrs Petrov being manhandled onto a plane at Sydney Airport ranked as one of the most iconic Australian photographs of the 20th century.  One thousand fighting, screaming members of the public tried to stop Mme. Petrov from returning to Russia as she screamed back in Russian, “Ja nie chat chu” (I not want to go).

But in a dramatic twist at Darwin Airport as the plane was refuelling, ASIO agents grabbed her off the plane onto Australian soil for recapture after Sir Robert Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, intervened. The Petrovs later lived incognito in Melbourne under pseudonyms but not before being photographed at a ”safe house” in Palm Beach mastering the art of using a Hills Hoist, an adjustable clothes line.

The Russian Embassy was then closed and Australia severed diplomatic relations with Russia. Vladimir Petrov eventually died in 1991.

It was re-opened in 1959 assisted by Ivan Skripov, First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Australia.

In 1962 the Macelhone Stairs, leading from Woolloomooloo to Potts Point, was the sight of another cold war drama. It is one of three stairways that connect Brougham Street to Victoria Street and the corner of Challis Avenue. The others are Hordern Stairs (1882) and Butler Stairs (1869)

The Stairs consist of three flights totalling 113 steps and create a well-used pedestrian connection between the residences and tourist accommodation on the high ground of Victoria Street and the pubs, restaurants, wharves and the naval base of Woolloomooloo Bay and onward to the city and harbour.

Originally called the Challis Street Steps, they were constructed in 1904 of solid sandstone blocks which have been repaired or topped with cement and concrete in various places over time. There are two intermediate landings, approximately 3.6 metres deep by 4.2 metres wide.

It was here that a Russian agent secretly dropped information to be collected by an ASIO double agent, Mrs Williams, allegedly a former MI6 agent.

The stairway was one of many sites used for the espionage activities of Ivan Fedorovich Skripov.

On 17^thSeptember 1962, Mr. Skripov wrote to the agent, Mrs Williams, using invisible ink instructing her to pick up and deliver to him a container which would be found concealed under an iron post of the railings of the McElhone Stairs. The agent found the container as described two days later. But the container was recovered by ASIO and ASIO’s photographs of the event are now held in the National Archives of Australia.

Skripov gave Mrs Williams various other tasks to perform including collection of a crucial wireless transmitter used to send rapid encrypted messages overseas direct to Russia without detection, a crucial piece of espionage equipage. This was also captured by ASIO.

Skripov was publicly exposed in Federal Parliament and declared persona non grata. 30 photographs of the two agents meeting were released.

He and his family were forced to return to Russia with seven days’ notice.

Russia denied any wrong doing. In a radio broadcast from Moscow in English on 21^stFebruary 1963 it was claimed, but unsubstantiated, that Skripov’s flight from Australia made an unscheduled stop at Darwin because of a bomb threat. While waiting in the Airport terminal it was claimed Skripov was approached by an intelligence agent “with an Oxford accent” and invited to remain in Australia with promises of money, a two-storey house and a car. Skripov refused apparently, thus supporting Russia’s reputation.

The story so fascinated the Australian public that The Australian Women’s Weekly produced an article in February 1963 using a staff member as a stand-in for ‘the agent’ and photographed her re-enacting the events.

The Skripov affair of 1963 was, unlike the Petrov affair, a public relations and intelligence success.

To see Mr and Mrs Skripov departing Australia under escort click on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sa2sCrhdQw

To see how a Russian encryption message transmitter works click on: https://twitter.com/naagovau/status/1234222072441769985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1234222072441769985%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

By Andrew Woodhouse

Heritage Solutions