Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.
The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.
Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.
(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)
The fort’s guns were decommissioned in 1962 and the fort itself closed in 1972. Vacant for several years followed closure, it has since been occupied by the Newcastle Regional Maritime Museum and the local historical society. Today, open to the public and with some of its guns repositioned, guided tours of the fort and it’s tunnels are a principal feature of the site’s activities.
—————————————————
¹ before acquiring the name Ft Scratchley the site had a sequence of different English names, “Beacon Hill”, “Fortification Hill”, “Signal Hill”
² although the first (seven-gun) earthen battery was installed there in 1828
✿✿✿
Referenced websites and sources:
‘Tunnel into 200 years of history’, Fort Scratchley Historical Site, www.fortscratchley.com.au
At the end of Anzac Parade, not far from where the bitumen meets the grassy knoll, was once the location of the La Perouse tram terminus (known locally as “the Loop”). The tram lines were torn up in 1961 with the La Perouse line having the distinction of being the last Sydney tram service still running at that time. This is an ideal spot to kick-off a leisurely and instructive saunter through Sydney’s southern suburban coastline and unearth some of the connexions with its past. The knoll is dotted with a number of landmarks recalling both the early British colonial regime and Comte de Lapérouse’s brief sojourn on his eponymous peninsula.
Looking south, the first colonial structure that comes into our line of sight is the 1822 built sandstone, castellated watchtower … today an exotic backdrop favoured by numerous newly-weds for their wedding photos. In the 19th century the watchtower functioned as a surveillance point and customs post (under David Goodsir who had the quaint official title of “coast watcher”): strategically important because Botany Bay was a vulnerable point in the early colony, a sparsely populated “back door” through which smugglers sought to sneak contraband into Sydney by sea. A fire destroyed the attached wooden living quarters in 1957 [‘The Macquarie Watchtower, La Perouse’, (RDHS – Randwick and Districts Historical Society), www.randwickhistoricalsociety.org.au]. To the west of the castle tower is the monument to J-F Lapérouse, not far from the museum which also bears his name.
“Snake Man of La Perouse (Junior)” John Cann (Photo:SMH)Leaving the monument and walking east past the seemingly ever-present Mr Whippy van, the weekend kite-flyers, and assorted day-trippers reclining on the side of the hill, we come to a bridge leading to a one-time fort and later war veterans home, Bare Island. Organised tours of historic Bare Island on Sundays are available, but these days the most activity the hilly island sees are the scores of scuba divers who flock to its shoreline to enjoy what is one of the most popular dive sites in Sydney. From here we return to Anzac Parade and to a sign directing us to Congwong Bay Beach. Before we take that path lined with sandy vegetation on either side, we spot a square, fenced-off area just ahead which is decorated with colourful Aboriginal motifs. This is the famous “snake pit” (AKA “the Loop”), for 107 years a source of entertainment for Sunday visitors to La Perouse. A small, dedicated team of herpetological enthusiasts (for most of this period the work of one family of seasoned handlers – the Canns) have enthralled, mesmerised and horrified (probably in equal measures) untold numbers of onlookers. Every Sunday since c.1909 this pit has been the stage on which countless snakes, goannas, lizards and other reptiles have strutted their stuff!
Congwong Bay
We leave the snake ‘sideshow’ and cross small Congwong Beach, heading north-east into the scrub. Ignoring a right turn which leads to secluded Little Congwong Beach (a long-time haunt for unofficial nude bathers … shock/horror!), we keep to the main track which cuts through ragged scrubland that once was thick with tall, abundant Eastern Suburbs Banksias (melaleucas, coast tee trees, banksia serratas and the like). At the top of the rise (where a solitary rest bench sits) we go left up to the boundary of the first of four golf courses we will pass on our travels (the NSW Club), then right down a long, disused service trail that leads us to Henry Head. Henry Head was the site of a 19th century battery post which was meant to back up the fortifications at Bare Island further inside the heads (neither sets of guns were ever fired in anger!). On the point, in front of the Henry Head emplacements, is a small, obsolete lighthouse (Endeavour Light). The empty mountings where the guns were once housed now are bare shells with only the calling cards of vandals, graffitists and rubbish dumpers to show.
Henry Head battery
This windswept and desolate spot marks the start of a spectacular coastal walk. The quality of this walk has been enhanced in recent years with the addition of a mini-mesh boardwalk which facilitates the up-and-down clamber over the rocks. About halfway along the winding boardwalk we see a bench seat made from the very same mesh material … obsessive-compulsiveness or 100% utilisation of existing materials? Perhaps when they finished laying the boardwalk they had some mesh left over and thought, waste not, want not, might as well make a matching seat as well! The high cliffs from here down to Malabar provide some of the best vantage points in Sydney to view northbound pods of migrating whales (mainly Winter-Spring).
At the point where the rocks on the shoreline start to get too high to climb without the right mountaineering gear, we verge left and follow a narrow trail that winds up the hill. At the top we find ourselves rejoining the NSW Golf Club course. We steer a tight course around the edge of the cliff so as not to antagonise any iron-wielding golfers we may run in to, but also because it affords walkers the best views of the ocean. Lots of vivid, native coastal wildflowers can be seen along the cliff-top.
What remains of the stern of the ‘SS Minmi‘
Halfway through the golf course we take a diversion over a narrow footbridge to explore the aquatic reserve at Cape Banks. This sinewy peninsula, jutting out into the sea, was a WWII fortification and the site of a 1937 shipwreck, SS Minmi. The collier upon impact with the rocks one dark night split in two, the remainder of its stern, a rusty grey mess, draws curious sightseers and hikers to the peninsula (‘Shipwrecks’, Randwick City Council, www.randwick.nsw.gov.au). One of the holes of the golf course has a professional tee on the nature reserve itself, a challenging lofty shot back across a broad and windy stretch of water to the green, fully testing the nerves of even the most confident of golfers.
Continuing through the golf course onto a bush track with lush vegetation, the path turns towards the road, coming out near the Westpac Chopper Base. Adjacent to the base is a pistol range, the home of the Sydney Pistol Club❈. Just after that we turn right and enter what a sign describes as the “Coastal Hospital Management Trail”. It is an ancient looking graveyard … the widespread, abandoned remains of the old Coast Hospital Cemetery, the scattered graves and headstones all looking decidedly unkempt and decrepit (the approaches to the cemetery are usually water-logged after any significant rain). Many patients from the Little Bay infectious diseases hospital are buried here. Most of the headstones, much weathered by the elements and/or vandalised, are hard to read (see below for more on the historic hospital).
‘Wrapped Coast’ by Christo, 1969
After the cemetery the trail returns to the cliffs and we walk along the edge of the second golf course, St Michaels. More attractive wildflowers on the right side. At the end of the golf course where the headland turns to the left we catch a glimpse of a secluded little beach deep in the bay, aptly name “Little Bay” (behind the beach a third and shorter course is situated, this is the Coast Golf Course). There are many more houses and apartments in Little Bay now than 47 years ago when the celebrated avant-garde artists, Bulgarian-American Christo and his partner Jeanne-Claude, selected this remote and uninhibited stretch of Sydney coastline for an environmental art project. In a major logistics operation involving over 100 workers in 1969, these two practitioners of what has come to be called “environmental sculpture” ‘wrapped’ a 2.5km long section of Little Bay’s deserted rocky coast using one million square feet of synthetic woven fibre fabric and an awful lot of rope!❦
Coastal Hospital for Infectious Diseases
A short diversion from the walking path at Little Bay beach takes us up to Coast Hospital Road where the Prince Henry Hospital, initially called the Coast Hospital, was situated (in 2001 the hospital was closed and its services transferred to the Prince of Wales Hospital, the salvageable buildings were absorbed into local public housing). From 1881 Prince Henry functioned alternately as a smallpox hospital, a convalescent hospital, and a “fever hospital” dealing with all manner of infectious conditions over the years (diphtheria, TB, scarlet fever, bubonic plague, swine flu pandemic). Later the medical focus of Prince Henry was extended to epidemiology and preventative medicine and the poliomyelitis virus (‘Prince Henry Hospital – South Eastern Sydney Local Health District’, www.seslhd.health.nsw.gov.au).
Close to the Coast Hospital site the University of NSW maintained a campus for many years. Originally intended for a medical school which was never built, it was used instead for biological sciences research and for solar energy research (Solarch, first building in NSW to generate green power). In 2008 UNSW sold the land to developers and it now contains high-rise apartments [‘Development of ex-UNSW site Little Bay’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info].
The Coast walk continues north from Little Bay above “Christo’s Rocks” (a headland once owned by the Prince Henry Hospital) where we trek past the last of the four ocean-facing golf courses in a row, the Randwick Council course. Keeping out of the range of flying golf balls✥ is one of the navigational skills needed to thread your way through the maze of golf courses … a key to managing this is to hug the red marker posts on the cliff edges.
Finally we get beyond the last of the golf holes by the distance of a 4 wood, reaching Bay Parade and Long Bay where there is a rockpool and a tiny, unfashionable beach, too sheltered from the ocean to lure many serious board surfers. On the northern side of Long Bay you will spot plenty of black suited “frogmen and women”, signifying another popular dive site. Malabar Beach is very much the “poor relation” of much larger neighbour, Maroubra Beach, and its popularity probably hasn’t been enhanced over the years by its proximity to both a large sewerage outlet and a large penitentiary (Long Bay Gaol).
Anzac Rifle Range
The route taken for the final leg of our walk, to Maroubra, depends on circumstances at the time of the walk⊗. The optimal route is out to Boora Point where you can find a series of isolated concrete lookout posts from WWII, then north along the cliff-top past dense thickens of tea trees and banksia (the scrubby track here is ill-defined or even non-existent!). The last part which takes you to South Maroubra Beach skirts around the eastern perimeters of the vast Anzac Rifle Range (there has been recreational target shooting here on-and-off since the 1850s). After passing the northern boundary of the rifle range you do a sharp dog-leg left through wild, lanky vegetation around the model aero club field, followed by a U-turn, then back through an open gate (hard to spot until you get close, look to the right side) leading to Arthur Byrne Reserve and the South Maroubra beachfront.
All up the La Perouse to Maroubra coastal trek is about a 12.5 to 14.5 km walk depending on which route you take from Malabar Beach – with very minimal amount of gradient to contend with. If you are looking for a pleasant and feature-packed sort of coastline ramble, with plenty of variety to see on the way, then this one definitely ticks the box.
┭┮┯┰┱┲┳┭┮┯┰┱┲┳┭┮┯┰┱┲┳┭┮┯┰┱┲┳┭┮┯┰┱┲┳┭┮┯
❈ located here (near Cape Banks) since 1959, previously the handgun club practiced in a disused rail tunnel near Wynyard Station(!?!)
❦ Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘bag’ seems to have been to temporarily wrap monumentally large objects – natural or human-made … one of the other famous projects of the environmental artist-couple was the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin
✥ especially on the Council course where we find ourselves walking directly towards the golfers hitting from the tees!
⊗ if you are walking on a weekend on which the Rifle Club is holding a competition (red flags flying over the range), then the Boora Point route is not available (for safety reasons) and usually patrolled. On these occasions you need to take the western path through Cromwell and Pioneer Parks and come out at Broome Street, South Maroubra
The founding of the British colony in Port Jackson in 1788, isolated from the mother country some ten-and-a-half thousand miles away, brought with it many anxieties for the new settlers. With French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian empires all vying with Britain for global supremacy, the security of Sydney was very much on the minds of Governor Phillip and his gubernatorial successors. Right from the get-go measures were put in place to shore up the vulnerable colony’s defences, both against potential external threats and internal rebellion. How secure and how effective these efforts were, we shall examine below.
⇧ What’s left of the Dawes Pt battery, these days with a pretty sizeable awning!
1790: “No frills” fortifications
In 1790 a battery was located in Sydney on a rocky bluff jutting out into the harbour on what was to become known as Dawes Point. The Dawes Point fortifications were chosen to be the first line of defence against enemy invaders because of its propitious location – a high, narrow, peninsula offering an excellent views straight out onto the harbour✱. Also, being very close to the main settlement at Sydney Cove, news of any sign of impending danger or threat could be quickly relayed to the townspeople. A battery was also installed on Windmill Hill (now Observatory Hill) in 1794. Ten years later work commenced on the construction of Fort Phillip on the same site, the fort was intended to be a citadel in the event of convict insurrection, however it was never completed. In the 1850s most of the fortified structure got dismantled to make way for the building of the Sydney Observatory¹.
Over the course of the first seventy years or so of settlement in Sydney the security focus gradually shifted from concentrating on the inner harbour (Dawes Point and Sydney Cove) to defending the Heads and Botany Bay. In 1801 the first gun emplacements were built in Middle Head (north of Obelisk Bay) as a response to the growing threat to Britain of France under Napoleon (in the 20th century these fortifications were overgrown by vegetation and more or less forgotten until rediscovered in the 1990s)².
⇧ Outmoded artillery on ‘Windmill Hill‘
The threat to New South Wales, so distant from the European theatres of the Napoleonic Wars, probably seems a remote one when seen through modern eyes, but it was taken seriously at the time. Sydney was perceived as a desirable prize because of several factors – it had a strategically important harbour, the envy of navies all over the world; there was only a small population in place to defend the settlement; and later on it had huge quantities of gold bullion acquired from the goldfields³.
It seems that the adequacy of the fortifications was being called into question constantly throughout the 19th century. Criticism from prominent citizens of the colony was common (the embrasures ineffective, fragility of the fortification as a whole, etc). One of the points made by Commissioner Bigge’s Report into the colony (1820) was that in the event of another conflict between Britain and the USA (following upon the recent War of 1812) Britain’s colonies, especially New South Wales, would be very susceptible to seizure by the US⁴. In addition, the prevalence of American whaling fleets in the South Pacific made many in the colony fearful of raids on Sydney Town by Yankee privateers.
Francis Greenway was the architect commissioned to strengthen the principal fort at Dawes Point in 1819, having described (with some exaggeration) the battery’s prior state as “perfectly useless … so that any speculator of any of the nations we were at war with, might have entered our harbour, destroyed our infant town, blowed up the stores, and left us in a woeful condition⁵. Greenway was also responsible for the construction of Fort Macquarie on the tip of Bennelong Point (smack-bang where the Sydney Opera House is today!).
The strengthening of Sydney’s defences have often occurred as a reaction to security scares in the colony. The decision in 1841 to convert a convict hold in the middle of the harbour (Pinchgut Island) into Fort Denison came about after two American warships were discovered having anchored themselves in the harbour without being detected. The fortifications of Fort Denison were in any case far from swiftly constructed, not being finished until 1857, by which time the perceived external threat had shifted to Russia after the Crimean War.
South Head was fortified in the 1840s – though not equipped with artillery until the 1870s! Possessing an ideal vantage point to view vessels approaching the harbour, it was also used as a lookout and a signal station. Today a naval base, HMAS Watson, is housed on the land it occupied⁶.
Not all plans for the reform of Sydney’s coastal defences got acted on. In 1848 Lt-Colonel James Gordon proposed a definitive, systematic plan to upgrade and improve both the inner (harbour) fortifications and the outer (heads) fortifications. Gordon’s plans only ever got partially implemented by the colonial authorities who were content to “cherry-pick” what they liked⁷.
⇧ Upper Georges Heights battery
Following the Crimean War conflict, a fear that the Russian Pacific Fleet might invade the colony prompted an upgrade in defence facilities. Some fortifications were added to Bradleys Head and South Head, although nothing much really happened until Britain’s Cardwell Army Reforms came into effect (1870). One consequence was that British ‘redcoats’ were withdrawn from Australia and the colony was required to raise local units to protect itself. This proved a spur to the authorities in Sydney to construct new fortifications further north-east in Port Jackson, around Mosman. Gun emplacements were built at Middle Head, Georges Head, Bradleys Head and Lower Georges Heights.
British fears that Tsarist Russia might try to extend its empire into India via Afghanistan led to a wave of ‘Russophobia’in the 1870s and 80s8, which spread eventually to the NSW colony. Already, in 1863 a Russian corvette (the Bogatyr) had visited Sydney and Melbourne, prompting the Sydney Morning Herald to allege that it was secretly conducting topographical surveys of Port Jackson and Botany Bay to ascertain the strength of the settlement’s fortifications⁹.
⇧ Bare Island – decent sort of target!
The Sydney authorities, fearing an attack from the Russian Navy and sensing that Sydney was vulnerable to an attack from its southern “back door”, built a fort in 1888 at Bare Island off La Perouse⊕ at the entrance to Botany Bay. The edifice unfortunately was composed of poor quality materials and began to crumble before completion. The islet fort was decommissioned in 1902 due in part to the state of its armaments. Though heavily-gunned its technology had quickly become outdated. The Russian Pacific Fleet never came to Bare Island but these days scuba divers flock to it as its waters are a prized diving site¹⁰.
The Jervois-Stratchley Reports (defence capability reviews) of the late 1870s emphasised the military importance of sea-ports and this led to a new phase of fort construction in Sydney and elsewhere in the Australasian colonies, eg, Bare Island, Fort Nepean (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Fort Lytton (Brisbane) and the eponymous Fort Scratchley in Newcastle. The fortifications designed by Lieutenant Scratchley, eg, Bare Island, the 1890s cliff-top forts manned with large, anti-bombardment guns around Sydney’s eastern seaboard to protect the suburbs of Vaucluse (Signal Hill Fort), Bondi (Ben Buckler) and Clovelly/Coogee (Shark Point), were outmoded and already basically obsolete when completed¹¹.
The development of Sydney’s coastal defences has followed an irregular course since 1788. Its decidedly desultory and piecemeal trajectory can be attributed to a number of factors, principal among which is cost. Funding defensive works with all the infrastructure required (then as well as now) is an expensive business. Unsurprisingly, the resort to cost-cutting as in the Dawes Point battery, led to the use of inferior materials and rapid disintegration of the construction. Procuring the artillery was neither cheap or easy to do, and in virtually no time the weaponry became out-of-date¹². Also at times, the “tyranny of distance” possibly breed in the local authorities a degree of complacency. Being so far away from where the international action was, meant that coastal fortification often ended up a lower priority that the other, immediate needs of the colony.
Postscript: Bare Is
Bare Island has functioned as a museum since the early 1960s, having never fired a shot in anger (fortunately so perhaps, as had it seen action, its location would have been terribly exposed to hostile fire). Its infrastructure remains largely intact although it’s disappearing guns have indeed ‘disappeared’ for good. The nearby but remote Henry Head is today overgrown to a large extent with vegetation and also sans guns.
⇧ Old Fort Rd, Middle Head
Middle Harbour fortifications
Middle Head/Georges Head (Mosman) has probably the best kept fortifications on the Sydney coast, owing in large part to the fact that this part of Middle Harbour was under military jurisdiction for over a century. The area at various times has contained, et al, a naval hospital, army camp (barracks, quarters, etc), a gunnery school and a submarine miners’ depot.
⇧ the Outer Fort’s notorious “tiger cages”
Middle Head has two forts on the headland, the larger one, the Outer Fort, is perched up on sloping ground in front of a cleared area. The fort’s emplacements contain the notorious the “tiger cages”. During the Vietnam War the cages were used by the Australian Army to train soldiers to withstand torture and interrogation. On the iron grills of some of the cages rust marks are still visible, a remnant of the water entrapment ordeals that used to be meted out! Although no shots were ever fired in anger from the Head, in the middle of last century the battery’s gunners used to practice the accuracy of their 10 and 12 inch guns on a tiny, rocky outcrop of an island in Middle Harbour – which is now fully submerged (no surprise!)
A 1970s ‘Indie’ film set
The smaller Inner Fort with dense vegetation surrounding it has a very different claim to fame. It was used as the bikies’ hideout in the 1974 independent cult movie Stone. The emplacements have long entrance ramps leading to circular gun enclosures and the bikies on their Harleys would tear through the bush track and along the ramps into the enclosures. The two forts and the nearby fort at Georges Head all have the same design – circular gun mounts with ancillary rooms running off them and a vast network of connecting tunnels leading to other military instalments on the promontory.
⇧ Emplacements at Middle Head
The Dawes Point battery today is non-existent, the space merely one of the historic curios of the Rocks. All that remains is the symbolism of a couple of authentic looking canons, some information boards recounting the history and architecture, and an artist’s modern, interpretative representation of the former structure … and a nice park in the shadows of the steel undergirth of the harbour bridge.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° ✱ Dawes Point functioned as the centrepiece of a system of signal stations. A series of strategically positioned signal posts stretching out to the Heads would relay information on marine activity such as the approach of foreign shipping
⊕ at the same gun emplacements (with disappearing guns) were constructed at Henry Head on the most easterly part of La Perouse
≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅≅
¹ ‘Colonial Powder Magazines – Fort Phillip Powder Magazine’, www.users.tpg.com
²’Sydney’s lost fort declared open’, 23. July 2010, www.news.com.au
³ Dean Boyce, ‘Defending colonial Sydney” Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/defending_colonial_sydney, viewed 30 March 2016.
⁴ Boyce 2008; A Wayne Johnson, ‘Showdown in the Pacific: a Remote Response to European Power Struggles in the Pacific, Dawes Point Battery, Sydney, 1791-1925’, (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority), www.sha.org/uploads/files/
⁵ F Greenway, Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser, 13 September 1834.
⁶ ‘Bridging the Gap’, Dictionary of Sydney,2011.
⁷ ‘Sydney’s Fortifications’ (2015), www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au
⁸ ‘Russophobia’ was evident at the time in the popularity of “Invasion scare novels” (eg, The Invasion by WH Walker, published in Sydney in 1877, an account of a fictionalised attack on Sydney by the Russian navy, Boyce 2008.
⁹ A Massov, ‘The Russian Corvette “Bogatyr” in Melbourne and Sydney in 1863’, http://australiarussia.com.au
¹⁰ ‘Bare Island (New South Wales)’, Wikipedia, www.e.n.wikipedia.org
¹¹ Boyce 2008; ‘Sydney’s Fortifications’ 2015.
¹² ‘Sydney’s Colonial Fortifications’, Australian Society for the History of Engineering & Technology (ASHET, Self-guided Tour, nd)
Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.
The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.
Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.
(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)
Close to the Coast Hospital site the University of NSW maintained a campus for many years. Originally intended for a medical school which was never built, it was used instead for biological sciences research and for solar energy research (Solarch, first building in NSW to generate green power). In 2008 UNSW sold the land to developers and it now contains high-rise apartments [‘Development of ex-UNSW site Little Bay’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info].
