More than a beachside place

We all know Queenscliff well enough. It is a beachside place with some very stately old buildings and the terminus of the Sorrento ferry. It is near the Heads, etc. That is about it.
There is part of it, though, that seems forgotten and that had an impact on our past, though the builders thought it might have a much bigger one.
This is Fort Queenscliff.
In May 1973 the Army Journal published an article by Major C.A. Cunningham, of the Royal Australian Artillery. Someone photocopied it and made it a simple cardboard binding, and I subsequently picked it up somewhere. I found it yesterday when cleaning out my bookshelves – and I have no recollection of having seen it anywhere before.
First he mentions Buckley's Cave, still there, in which Buckley might (or might not) have lived in 1803 after escaping from the convict settlement at Sorrento. One can only wonder at his feelings when the settlement was abandoned and the ships sailed past him out of the Bay, leaving him as the only white man in that wilderness.
The first settlement there was in 1841 when "four pilots of the Government Pilot Service, two freemen, a convict boat keeper and two boats were established at Shortland's Bluff…"
Throughout the 1850s our government was convinced that the Russians (or perhaps even the French) would invade us and there were plans and inquiries, policies and recommendations, many of which went nowhere at all.
The fortification of Port Phillip was clearly necessary. The South Channel Fort has been on this page before, and the network of mines laid beneath the waters. Portsea became a garrison and so, in time, did Queenscliff. The sandstone seawall was originally meant to prevent erosion and provide a firm footing for heavy artillery.
It was decided to raise a citizen militia, to be volunteers unless ab ballot was needed in some areas. The volunteers were enlisted for a three-year term, and were to be aged between 18 and 50. Even schoolboys over ten and learning in a government-aided school had a compulsory one-hour training session each week.
When it came to actually spending the money, things moved far more slowly. An English officer came here in 1860 to prepare recommendations, and his plan included artillery at Point Nepean, Swan Island, the South Channel Shoal, and Queenscliff and Crows' Nest..
In 1882, the Government decided to protect The Heads, only 22 years later, during a wave of "the Russians are coming" paranoia. Gun emplacements were built as small fortresses at Queenscliff and Portsea, the South Channel Shoal and Port Franklin (which was in Portsea but a little away from the Heads). Less-protected gun emplacements were built at Eagles Nest, Crows Nest and Swan Island.
In the building of the Queenscliff fort there was a huge need for labour. Local farmers and fishermen provided much of the labour and good wages were paid. At this time town grew, with the influx of labour and regular wages, and got both an official Post Office and a Police Station. Queenscliff had a small school long before that, serving the fishing families and a few farmers.
The Anglican church had a small school in Queenscliff between 1854 and 1873 and after the 1872 Education Act a State School was opened in Queenscliff. The Anglican school merged into the new State School quite seamlessly, even using the same teachers. This was at the time when the fort was being started so the number of children grew. The father of Arthur Streeton, a great Australian artist was Headmaster at one stage (before the State School) and one man of particular endeavour was Head Teacher Jordon – he was the Town Clerk, Headmaster, Captain of a three-gun battery and eventually the Clerk of Petty Sessions.
Secondary-level schooling began only after World War 2, when Queenscliff opened a Higher Elementary School.
By 1891 Port Phillip Heads was the most strongly-defended place in the British Empire, believe it or not. We even had a Victorian navy, with nine ships, including HMVS Cerberus, a monitor, which means a ship that is really a floating platform for a single large gun. The Rip is only about three and a half kilometres wide, but there are such variation in depth, and the currents are so strong, that the navigable width is only a kilometre, and the channel forms a serpentine shape.
Matthew Flinders approached the Heads the first time but stood off and then tried again because the strong "ripple", from which got the name Rip. He recognised it as very dangerous water.
Enemy ships of any size at all would need to be very careful entering between the Heads, a triangular area defined by Point Nepean, Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff. During that time they would be well within the range of the guns at Fort Queenscliff and the Point Nepean battery.
The Queenscliff fort had a moat and extensive barbed-wire barriers. It was armed with two 9.2" guns and three six-inch guns (the sizes refer to the barrel diameter) with a variety of smaller guns and rifled pieces. It was 'casemated', which meant double-walled, with a space between the walls, so that if the outer wall was breached the inner wall would still be there.
There were four entrances from bridges over the moat, with huge wooden gates, giving the place a castle-ish look. In the late 1930s some of the moat was filled in to provide easier access and the three bridges were no longer needed.
Of course, a fort is just a building. It needs guns and soldiers to be of any value. There was a volunteer company of Gunners at Queenscliff, which became part of the permanent Victorian Artillery, and after Federation part of the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery. The Queenscliff fort had hosted engineers as well (and artillery needs engineering support) but by the time of WW2 it was almost purely an artillery establishment. There was apparently a pre-Federation time when there existed the Victorian Regiment of the Royal Australian Artillery.
Standards were very high in all facets of both the Royal Australian Engineers' work and that of the artillerymen. Each Wednesday the Commanding Officer held a formal parade and the garrison marched through the town "reminding all and sundry that Queenscliff was a "Garrison" town."
After WW2 coastal artillery was largely seen to be outmoded in the new world of aircraft and aircraft carriers. In December 1946 the Australia Staff College moved into the fort, training officers for promotion, in a very rigorous manner. It had thus become a college rather than a fort, but its past was never left behind.
There are still huge parts of the fortress systems on both sides of the Heads in place today and they are well worth a visit. For the moment we are not worried about the French or the Russians invading.