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South Beach Battery was a gun emplacement, forming part of Fremantle Fortress. Its ruins are in what is now Hamilton Hill in a bush area west of Southend Road, and east of Emplacement Crescent, which may well have been named for it.
Heritage Council:
History
In 1940 the Commonwealth of Australia ordered two batteries of 5.25 inch guns. These were land based, single barrel versions of a dual purpose (Anti Aircraft/Surface) gun mounted in twin turrets in Royal Navy Anti Aircraft cruisers. The equipment intended for Leighton and South Beach would have provided high level anti aircraft and coast artillery cover for Fremantle Harbour and the Sound.
The equipment arrived in 1944 and work was completed at Leighton in 1947 when the Battery was declared operational. The Battery at South Beach was never finished and never became operational.
Leighton Battery remained operational until 1963 when Coast Artillery left the order of battle and the installations were scrapped. Of the three gun pits at Leighton, one has been excavated and forms part of the tours operated by the Royal Australian Artillery Historical Society. One remains buried and one was destroyed for the Buckland Hill housing estate.
At South Beach the entire installation was destroyed except for the excavated remains now visible.
Physical Description
This remaining gun pit has been excavated and is now exposed on a hill. The entire structure now in evidence would have originally been buried to the roof line, and would have been invisible except for the roof. It has been painted with an inappropriate ‘camouflage’ pattern and has been vandalised.
Statement of Significance
South Beach Battery (remains) is evidence of the importance of defending the Western Australian coastline, and in particular Fremantle Harbour and Cockburn Sound.
South Beach Battery (remains) may have some archaeological potential to reveal information about military construction techniques in the 1940s.
References and links
Heritage Council page for South Beach Battery.
Heritage Council page for South Beach.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 15 April, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/southbeachbattery.html (it was last updated on 17 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.