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.
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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
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Referenced websites and sources:
‘Tunnel into 200 years of history’, Fort Scratchley Historical Site, www.fortscratchley.com.au
‘The Newcastle Fortifications – SMH 24 May 1881’, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13484259
‘Fort Scratchley’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org