Devonport
Volcanic headland laced with prisoner-dug tunnels built to repel an invasion that never came.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Devonport in Auckland traces the gun batteries built on the headland above town in the 1880s, out of a fear that Russian warships might sail into the harbor. It follows the one test shot fired in 1899, so loud it shattered windows across the neighborhood, and the decades of local rumor that tunnels beneath the hill hid warplanes during the Second World War. Listen for how much of the digging fell to convicts marched up from a nearby barracks, hauling picks and wheelbarrows through solid volcanic rock between 1888 and 1914.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
North Head
Clifftop volcanic headland riddled with hand-cut tunnels and nineteenth-century disappearing guns guarding a harbour entrance.
Waiheke Island
Vineyard-dotted island laced with beaches, art studios, and a hidden wartime gun fortress.
Takarunga / Mount Victoria
Scoria-cone volcano crowned by a hidden disappearing gun and Maori pa earthworks above the harbour.
Cheltenham Beach
Golden crescent beach at a volcanic headland's foot, facing Rangitoto across calm water.
Torpedo Bay Navy Museum
Restored nineteenth-century mine depot turned naval museum on a harbourside bay in Devonport.
Maungawhau / Mount Eden
Dormant scoria volcano with a deep crater once a fortified Māori hilltop stronghold.