The battery at Kangaroo Bluff was built between 1881 and 1884. Its eight inch Armstrong guns were first fired in February 1885. It supported batteries on the Queens Domain and at Battery Point as defence against a feared Russian invasion; fears that were fuelled by the appearance of two Russian warships on the Derwent River in 1873.
The Kangaroo Bluff battery is a self-contained symmetrical sunken fortification, complete with earthworks, gun emplacements, connecting passageways and underground magazines. The form of the battery is remarkably intact and the mounds, ditches and embankments are as much part of the heritage fabric of the site as the masonry elements and the historic cannon. The site is surrounded by a wet moat. Prickly hawthorn hedges were planted on top of the moat walls to impede the enemy should they transgress the moat wall.
It's an interesting short visit to this historic site.
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