Gavin Grimmer
Could some of these eyewitnesses be talking about this entrance, as some of their descriptions could also fit to this tunnel entrance?
Note these 1942 photos are absolutely full of activity going on. The claim was that there was very little change happening on North Head during the Second World War, but all the photos show that there was more activity occurring on that hill over that period than probably the entire history of North Head... yet there is to be found very little recorded documents documenting this! There were claims that the Americans were not involved with North Head during WW2, yet there are photos showing American GMC trucks lined up along the wharf at Torpedo Bay!
I was rather surprised when Martin noticed this tunnel entrance in the WW2 photos
as I remembered seeing the indentation and line of mortared together scoria rocks
all lined up in this spot when we were up there a couple of years ago, and I remembered
that at the time I wondered if this line of rocks were there for a purpose? They
had very obviously been placed there for a reason. I thought I had at the time taken
a photograph of them but cannot find them, so on a recent visit I made sure I photographed
them. Unfortunately, in the space of the two years, they had been all but been overgrown,
but the indentation and partial sight of the rocks are still just visible, but difficult
to portray here. The walking track that passes this spot has obviously been built
up as the height from the track to this top row of rocks (top of the tunnel?) is
now only a few feet. Pictured standing here is Peter Golder who did his compulsory
military training on North Head in the 1960’s.
Update 2nd February 2015
This was originally where I had decided to end the entire article on North Head as I have so many other things building up that need my attention, but some more information came along that I just have to tell you about.... Take for instance the old northern summit battery that we spoke about (page 39).
Compare these two old photos
:
The first, is of one of the two gun batteries on Fort Buckley in Wellington, NZ. The second one as you know is the old northern summit battery on North Head..Note they are both very similar layouts as far as ammunition cupboards are concerned, except the Fort Buckley gun pit doesn’t show any sign of what I believe is ammunition hoists.
This is because the Ammunition Magazine for these two guns was situated underground behind these two guns as per the map on the right... Compliments of the Author, Darcy Waters, http://capitaldefence.orconhosting.net.nz/ ... a most interesting web site. These guns in Wellington were the same size (64 pounder RML) as the two early summit northern and southern guns on North Head as shown in the middle image.
NH Page 55
