Hobart Batteries

Before I post photos, a bit on the old batteries around Hobart to provide some context.

I find these interesting for two reasons. The first, the obvious, is the acquiring of knowledge and possibly usefulness in future of writing. The second, they are there, but you don't realise they are there.


The Kangaroo Bluff battery is well known. The gun behind a brick wall, pointing over the river, is a common postcard image, but that's usually all that's show. Have a look at that picutre, so you can why, when I finally walked up there one day, I was surprised to find all this.

If you look at the photo of Alexandra Battery from yesterday, you can just see Sandy Bay Rd between the hill and the houses.

That's the main road through the southern suburbs. So easy to drive pass and not know its there.

Those two are the only extant ones.

There's a map on the Parks & Wildlife site that shows all the locations.

The Queens Battery was where the cenotaph is now. The State Library has a couple of photos of it: this one from about 1900 and this one is c. 1875, and another in the Australian War Memorial collection.

Prince of Wales & Prince Albert are located in Battery Point. AFAIK one was where the Castray Esplanade now runs (the road that follows the shoreline around into Salamanca Place). The other was built above it, in what is now the park behind the signal station.


I believe both were demolished in the 1880s.

The one that is marked on the map as Mona Street (proposed) I don't know about. Some web sites have it as the location of the battery that gives Battery Point its name, but that's from the Mulgrave Battery, built in 1818. I love that picture, it's such a formidable and technologically advanced structure.