1893

Military relics around Sydney’s coast reveal that from its earliest days the convict settlement felt threatened. Within weeks of the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788, the first defences were built at Dawes Point using two cannon from the ship Sirius. Among the most likely landing places for invaders were Bondi Beach and Botany Bay, an inquiry found in 1820. Defences built at Bare Island (La Perouse) and Henry Head (Botany Bay) date from that time. Sydney’s fear of attack in its first 100 years was well-founded, with rivals of the British Empire – America, France, Spain, Russia, and Germany – sending warships into the Pacific to annexe territories. Sydney was an easy target, with a strategically important harbour, a small population and, by the 1850s, bullion from the gold fields. Invasion scares sparked much debate – and a building boom in fortifications.

By the early 1890s, Sydney's defence was to be based on heavy coastal guns in strong fortifications facing seaward. The focus moved from the inner harbour to the city's eastern coastline, with cliff-top forts housing large anti-bombardment guns constructed at Bondi, Shark Point (Clovelly) and Signal Hill (Vaucluse) to fight off warship attack from old and new enemies, including Japan. Bondi’s cannon was installed in 1893 on the Ben Buckler headland and played a role in Australia’s strategic response to coastal defence. The site, then known as the Bondi Military Reserve, was located within what is now Hugh Bamford Reserve. A road, known as the Military Road, serviced the Ben Buckler Gun, cast in 1891 by the Armstrong Foundry. The 22-ton 9.2-inch (234 mm) calibre, breech-loading gun was transferred from Victoria Barracks in November 1893. The event was reported in the Sydney Mail:
“Owing to the steepness and bad condition of the roads … [the installation] was no easy task. Thirty-five horses were employed and more than once the wheels of the trolley sank into the ground and the whole affair had to be helped out with cranes. It was taken along Old South Head Road towards the light house and then back towards Ben Buckler by a track leading up the rocks in a zig-zag direction. Here most of the horses were dispensed with, and the trolley was got along foot by foot by placing iron plates in front of the wheels over which it was dragged by horses, the plates were then again moved to the front and the same process repeated … In this way Ben Buckler was reached in about three weeks or a month from Victoria Barracks."

A correspondent to the Sydney Illustrated News enthused that “When in position, the gun will be able to pay considerable attention to any man-of-war attempting to bombard the city off Bondi.”

The guns could be raised to fire and lowered to reload in their fortified pits. The Ben Buckler gun weighed 20 tonnes and was installed on an EOC Hydro-pneumatic Mark "1" disappearing mount, operated by hydraulic power. The gun was fired through a slot in the iron "top" shield and could fire a 172-kilogram armour-piercing projectile to a range of 8,200 metres. The three coastal batteries remained in their steel and concrete casements cut into the sandstone for at least 65 years. They were manned during World War I and readied for action briefly in 1918 when two German boats were thought to be operating off the coast. By World War II, the gun was redundant. After the war the coastal defence guns were offered for sale, but no buyer could be obtained for the Ben Buckler weapon. It is believed to have been buried in its concrete fortress, with its store rooms and ammunition bunkers, and preserved under grass. The gun was disturbed by excavation works for the Bondi sewerage plant in 1984 and was listed in the Waverley Heritage Study in 1990.

Courtesy the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.