Fort Queenscliff Part II

I started posting about Fort Queenscliff before Christmas. Then of course I got distracted by my 200th post Q&A.

So in the tradition of my (semi-mythical) Uncle Harry I put on my tour guide’s hat and resume with a guided tour of Fort Queenscliff.

The Fort sits on the southern outskirts of Queenscliff guarding “The Rip”. The defences at Queenscliff and around Port Phillip Bay were built through the second half of the 19th century, to protect Melbourne from invasion by hostile foreign powers.
These hostile powers were identified as the French, the Russians and, at one stage during the American Civil War, the United States!

When you approach The Fort from the landward side you see a decidedly unimpressive brick wall that forms the rear defence. Originally there was a dry moat and there are dozens of loopholes for rifle fire from inside. But with my knowledge of military technology I was unimpressed. Yes the fort was built in the Nineteenth Century but it was clear that any force bringing even light artillery to bear on this wall would have quickly overcome these defences.

However, I wasn’t quite ready to write the fort off, it was after all designed to protect the entrance to Port Phillip Bay from the sea.

Inside the fort the tour starts with the interior buildings. One is the Black Lighthouse which I posted about previously. Standing next to this is an old signal tower. Fort Queenscliff was only one of a chain of forts built around the entrance to The Bay.
Any defence of Port Phillip Bay would have been coordinated by signals sent through this tower.

Next you pass this Georgian style building. Before The Fort was built this was the civilian post and telegraph office for the town. When the fort was built it was closed to civilians, the offices were shifted into the town. This building became part of the Fort’s hospital.

Then you approach what was the real business end of the fort. These bunker walls form the back side of a massive earth bank that is the front wall of the fort. Set into the bank are a number of heavy gun emplacements.
This is a Nineteenth Century “disappearing gun”And from below. The concept of the gun was that once it was fired it would drop out of sight so the crew could safely reload it. The massive hydraulic ram would lift it up to be fired again.

This is the latest in 19th century communication technology, a brass speaking tube to pass orders to the original magazines deep beneath the base of the guns.

Down below is a whole network of tunnels to allow communication and troops to move around The Fort while under fire.One feature I liked was the original brass oil lamps set in alcoves in the walls. These were locked behind glass to prevent accidents setting off the tonnes of high explosive that were once stored down here. The modern electric lights make things much easier

Back up top we then saw the emplacements built for twentieth century shore battery guns.Impressive until you realise they are dummies. The shield is the original from gun that was sited here in the 1930s, but the barrel is a fake.
With World War II there was a sudden realisation that Japanese naval air-power could easily target these guns. So they were moved to camouflaged positions near Point Lonsdale. The dummies were placed so enemy aerial reconnaissance or spies would report the guns were still in place and waste effort targeting a ruse.

This final photo is of the command bunker used in WWI and WWII.Allegedly the first angry Allied shots of WWI were ordered from here when a German merchant vessel attempted to make a run for the open ocean.

By the 1880s Port Phillip Bay was the most heavily defended port anywhere in the British Empire. Would anyone care to guess why?

Uncle Harry signing off.

Fort Queenscliff: Part 1 ‘The Rip’

Back in November I offered a choice between posting about Mum’s place and Fort Queenscliff. There were more votes for the personal, and since then it has slipped my mind to post about the fort. Looking at the piccies I want to post I’ve chosen twenty odd, which seems a few too many for a single post.

So I’ve decided to talk about the fort in two separate posts. Here tonight is the first part about ‘The Rip’ which is the channel that Fort Queenscliff once guarded. This first piccie is taken from the fort looking across the narrow mouth of the bay to the Mornington Peninsula near Portsea.

The Rip with a container ship passing. As you can see the channel is quite narrow, only about 3 km (1.8 miles across) and in fact the navigable width for a ship of this size is only 250 metres or so.

Given that the bay has a surface area of 1900 square kilometres that means there is always a powerful tidal current running in or out, hence ‘The Rip’. The current going either way is usually around 6 knots.

To add to this difficulty the ships have to change course part way through. To assist with navigation of the passage not one, but two light houses stand in the grounds of Fort Queenscliff.

The Black Lighthouse, This is one of a handful of black lighthouses in the world. Most are painted bright colours (usually white) to help warn ships off rocks. Unusually this light house was not built to warn ships away from nearby rocks. More about that in a minute
(The wooden tower in the above piccie is not a light house. It is a signal tower from the early days of the fort.)

Interestingly most light houses in the British Empire at this period (the late 1800s) were built to a common plan. This produced a strange feature on the Black Lighthouse.
The original door was built about 20 feet above ground level. This was because the design was also used on rocks that were covered by high tides. The Government architect was so rigid that this lighthouse had the same door although it is hundreds of metres from the sea and at the top of a high cliff.

Apparently the lighthouse keepers had to climb a ladder to get to the door until nearly 50 years had passed and the door was finally shifted to ground level!

The second lighthouse in the fort is the White Lighthouse. Because the fort is still a military establishment I wasn’t allowed closer to the White Lighthouse.

This Lighthouse a few miles away at Point Lonsdale is almost identical.So why are there two light houses in the fort one black and one white?
Any guesses?

Well to demonstrate the answer the question I drove a couple of kilometres (1.5 miles) north to the Queenscliff Harbour. At the harbour is this new space age looking viewing tower.Up there are some beautiful views: of the MarinaAnd of The Rip.
In the foreground is the boat house that once housed the lifeboat that saved people from countless wrecks in The Rip.
Fort Queenscliff stands on the cliff on the right side of the piccie.

Now if I zoom in (please excuse the poor quality the piccie was taken through salt encrusted glass) you can just about see what the two light houses are used for.
The Black Lighthouse is closer and you can just see the top of the White Lighthouse over the trees.Now you can’t quite see (because we are off to one side) the cargo ship in the distance is being lined up with both white and black lighthouses. The Pilot knows that if the ship is travelling on an imaginary line that passes through both lighthouses it is aiming for the deep channel.

The incoming ships are then turned hard to their starboard (their right, to the left side of this piccie) when they get to about where the smaller boat is to follow the channel as it curves around in to the bay.

So these are friendly light houses that say “come here” rather than the usual standoffish loner light houses that are found around most coasts.