This week, Roy decided that it was time to show his friends a place which he discovered a few months ago. May is a very important month in the history of Australia's defence, with the Battle of the Coral Sea taking place in early May and the attempted invasion of Sydney Harbour by the Japanese in late May, both in 1942. He had seen many museums focussed on Australia's defences and war history, but when he visited the Breakwater Battery Military Museum at Port Kembla he was really taken with the museum and it's surroundings and wanted to show his online friends why he liked it so much.
The Breakwater Battery Military Museum in Port Kembla is in the old Pilot Cottage building on the headland of Hill 60. The building was built in 1939 and was the command centre and headquarters for the Hill 60 Fort Complex during World War Two. If you would like to visit, the museum itself is open on the second and fourth Sunday from 10am until 2pm but the surrounding heritage park is accessible at other times. If you visit, make sure to check out the huge tank traps and the gun emplacements outside the museum and the recreated trenches and displays inside. It's a really welcoming, kid friendly museum and there is plenty of room outside to run off a little excess energy or have a picnic.
During the wars, and even before the wars began, Australia was very conscious of it's need for adequate coastal defences. There has been worry about invasion since the First Fleet arrived and some of the coastal defences date back to convict times! After all, Australia was a big country with lots of foreshore to invade, but was a long way from any help if it needed to defend itself in a hurry. They needed to ensure that invasions were stopped before they really began and so networks of coastal defences were set up. In New South Wales the defences at one stage stretched almost unbroken from Newcastle right to the Illawarra! Roy has already visited two other forts in Newcastle (to see his posts click here or here). Hill 60 at Port Kembla was one of these coastal fortifications during World War Two. People were worried that if the enemy did invade they might do it somewhere like Port Kembla, as the harbor would provide a safe place for the ships and submarines and getting to Sydney by land would not be hard. Also, many important industries were located in Port Kembla. Iron ore was processed at the iron works, and then used to make guns, ammunition, and other military hardware which were then often transported by ship to wherever they needed to go. Metal was even needed to build the ships! So protecting this area was really important!
Of course, the defences weren't just made up of a single building. There was far more to the Hill 60 fort complex, just as was the case for most of the coastal defences. In 1939 two gun emplacements were built at the Hill 60 fort, protecting the harbour from attack. These guns could both fire six inch shells and had a range of over 16 kilometers! There were also complexes of tunnels built into the hill, which contained control rooms. During the war search lights, anti-aircraft guns and various other army facilities were also to be found at Hill 60. There were even tank traps on the beaches to stop tanks coming ashore. A large number of these big, white concrete triangles are now an interesting sculptural feature of the heritage park at the Breakwater Battery Museum. If you would like to learn more about the Hill 60 Fort or the Breakwater Battery Military Museum click here.
Posted by: |