The fort, designed by Lt Col

Being an obvious place for a warning beacon, a signal mast was set up in 1804, earning it the name Signal Hill. It was replaced by a coalfire beacon in 1813 which burned until Nobbys Lighthouse was set up in 1858. The army gained use of the site from 1843 and it was, for some time, used as a training ground. When fear of a Russian invasion gripped the colony in the 1870s it was decided that Newcastle, because of its strategic importance as a coal and steel producer, needed to be properly fortified. The fort, designed by Lt Col. Peter Scratchley, was built between 1881 and 1886 though it was, of course, upgraded in the twentieth century. The Heritage of Australia notes that Fort Scratchley 'is one of only two examples of late 19 thcentury military fortifications in New South Wales'. The forts moment came in June 1942 when a Japanese submarine attacked Newcastle which, as a coal port, was an obvious target. The guns of the fort (which, at this point, had been waiting for action for sixty five years) then fired the only shots ever launched at an enemy vessel from the Australian mainland. The military finally departed from the site in 1972 and it is now the Newcastle Region Maritime and Military Museum, open from 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. every day but Monday. Displays include the Boat Gallery, a carronade gun from 1762, a torpedo (they're bigger than you might think), items salvaged from the French barque Adolphe which was wrecked on the northern breakwater in 1904 (and which can still be seen at times) and the Time Ball, which stood atop Customs House from 1877 to the 1940s, and which was lowered at exactly 1.00 p.m. each afternoon to allow ships to check their chronometers. In the rock platform below Fort Scratchley are the ocean pools known as the Soldiers Baths, built in 1882. Nobbys Rosetta Stone Software Immediately below Fort Scratchley, off the roundabout at the end of Nobbys Rd, is a kiosk and a large carpark adjacent Harbourside Park. From this point a very narrow finger of land extends out from the mainland to the knoll known as Nobbys Head whereon sits a lighthouse standing sentinel over the southern side of the Hunter estuary. Beyond the headland the rocky mass of the southern breakwater lends a sheltering arm to ships entering the harbour. Captain Cook, passing up the coast in 1770 described Nobbys as a 'small round rock or Island, laying close under the land'. This refers to the fact that it was then disconnected entirely from the mainland. Lieutenant Shortland sought shelter at Nobbys while searching for escaped convicts in 1797 and named it Hackings Point. There he found coal and this resulted in a subsequent visit by Lt James Grant who called it Coal Island. Coal was mined there until 1817 but the hillock was known as Nobbys by 1810. Utilising convict labour and rock fill from the Fort Scratchley area, work began on the construction of a pier out to the island in 1818, thought to be the oldest rockfill breakwater in the Southern Hemisphere. It was named Macquarie Pier after Governor Macquarie who laid the foundation stone. Work was halted in 1823, recommenced in 1836 using rocks from Nobbys, completed in 1846 and rebuilt in 1864. In 1855 Nobbys was reduced in size from 61 m to 27 m and the lighthouse erected in 1857 to replace the coalfire beacon of Fort Scratchley.

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