Constructed in 1942 to provide protection for Port Kembla from enemy shipping and submarines. Two BL 9.2 inch Mk X gun emplacements with related underground facilities were constructed near Drummond, Wollongong.
Today the site is used as a mushroom farm. I was told that if you are polite with the owners they will let you in to have a look.
Georges Head Battery was an outer line harbor defense fortification designed especially to attack and prevent enemy ships from infiltrating the inner harbor. The fort held a prominent position and was located high above sea level with strategic views to the entrance (Sydney Heads) of Port Jackson. Other batteries were located on Middle Head, South Head, Shark Point and Bradleys Head, but none were ever used for combative purposes.
Georges Head was armed with four 80 pounder rifled muzzle loading guns and two 68 pounder muzzle-loading guns. It took three months and 250 soldiers to roll the gun barrels all the way from North Sydney to the batteries. They came along a rough track which later became Military Road. The guns had been positioned so poorly that this created the risk of one gun firing upon another. Also, the guns and soldiers were visible from the harbor. In 1877 large mounds of earth were placed between the pits to make sure the guns could not fire upon each other and to help protect the gun crew from enemy fire. When construction of the fort was complete, there were a total of 41 gun emplacements positioned around the harbor.
Defence tactics were planned using telescopes and plotters mounted in the middle of the second gun pit. From the telephone exchange, the Port Jackson District Commandant could communicate with all military installations on the harbor. Telephone cables ran through the tunnels, down the cliff and under the harbor to batteries on the other side.
The work of the submarine miner was secretive, technical and dangerous. During a demonstration in 1891, a crowd of several thousand watched as a terrible accident killed four miners and injured another eight.
In 1942, during the Second World War, the 'Sydney Harbour anti-submarine boom net' was installed. The boom net spanned the entire width of Sydney Harbour from Green (Laings) Point, Watsons Bay to Georges Heights in Mosman
The command post remained until the 1930’s. The area then became home to various defense bases until 2002 when the Army left after 130 years at Georges Head. The area in which the fortifications are situated is now open to the public and the Harbour Trust has restored the historic fortifications, creating a new type of lookout.
The hospital was carved out of solid rock during the construction of the tunnel system in 1872, and was originally designed to provide a storage room for the black powder charge used when firing the 68pdr and 80pdr guns of the battery.
The floor was originally covered in a bituminous substance, the walls were tiled with ceramic tiles not unlike those seen on the wall pictured, and the tunnel ceiling leading to the room was lined with cork. The purpose of these measures was to reduce the possibility of sparks and the potential for a powder explosion. The zigzag tunnel at the far end of the room was designed to act as a blast wall to contain any blast within the immediate area.
The room has been modified since 1872 and was used as a casualty clearing station in 1932/33 when the battery was re-gunned with the 6 inch breech loaded MK7 guns. Designed for emergencies only, it fortunately saw no casualties of war.The Ben Buckler Gun Battery is a fortified gun emplacement of the late-Victorian period located in the Northern Bondi locality of Ben Buckler, Sydney Australia. [1][2]
The Ben Buckler Gun Battery was constructed in 1892 as one of a set of three coastal defense fortifications for Sydney Harbour, the other two being Signal Hill Battery at Watsons Bay and the Shark Point Battery in Vaucluse. These fortifications were the last link in Sydney’s outer defense perimeter, which was intended to defend Sydney from bombardment by an enemy vessel standing off the coast. The fortifications built in the 1890s around Sydney's eastern suburbs were the culmination of some twenty years of construction of harbor defense installations that reflected the changing policy of the time to meet new technologies, threats and styles of warfare.
The Ben Buckler Battery is a rare, intact concrete 1890's gun emplacement, which was designed and developed for the new BL 9.2 inch (234 mm) Mk VI breech-loading 'counter bombardment' British Armstrong 'disappearing' gun. The Australian colonies bought 10 of these, three for Sydney, plus an extra barrel, four for Victoria at Fort Nepean and Fort Queenscliff, and two for Adelaide, South Australia, purchased in 1888. The Adelaide guns were never installed at Fort Glenelg and the British government bought them back in 1915. The barrel of the gun that had been installed at Signal Hill Battery survives on public display at the Royal Australian Artillery Museum at North Fort, North Head.
The Ben Buckler gun, Serial Number 7319, is the only complete 9.2-inch in Australia and was the largest gun in New South Wales. The gun barrel weighed 22 tons and it took a total of thirty six horses to transport the barrel from Victoria Barracks in Darlinghurst to the battery in North Bondi; the transit took over three weeks.
Soon after its arrival, the gun was installed on a hydraulically operated disappearing mount. The gun was located below ground level and beneath a domed iron shield set into a wall of reinforced concrete that was ten meters in diameter. The domed metal shield that covered the pit was intended to protect the gun from incoming shells.
Once the gun was loaded, the hydro pneumatic action shunted it forward and up through a slot in the shield. After discharging, the recoil mechanism forced the gun back into its pit. This protected the gun crew while loading and made the gun a very difficult target for an enemy ship to hit. The domed metal shield that covered the pit was intended to protect the gun from incoming shells.
Sometime in the 1950s the army vacated the site. The government was unsuccessful in finding a scrap metal buyer to remove the gun, so it buried the gun and gave the site over to parkland. The gun's existence was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the mid-1990s by Water Board engineers planning a new pipeline. It is now classed as an architectural relic and is under the protection of the Heritage Council.
Ben Buckler Gun Battery, North Bondi is at coordinates 33°53′03″S 151°17′04″E
The Australian Army took over occupation of the Hill 60 area and the Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from the land and were never permitted to return to the Hill.
Two large gun emplacements were constructed, housing BL 6 inch Mk XI guns and their shields held in storage from the decommissioned World War I cruisers HMAS Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Two large tunnels were built and are steep in descent and have a small gauge tramway used for hauling shells to the guns located at the 2 gun emplacements.
A concrete bunker is connected to the underground tunnel system.
Pictured above is one of two gun emplacement at the Illowra Battery aka Hill 60. The large steel shell is a former gun shield that was taken from one of the decommissioned World War I cruisers HMAS Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne before they were scrapped.
