Daily Photo – Harrington Point Gun Emplacement

The other month I went for a wander out to the Harrington Point gun emplacements on the Otago Peninsula, one of those places you always mean to explore properly but never quite get around to. I’d driven the long, winding road past the familiar waterside spots of Macandrew Bay, Broad Bay and Portobello, through Ōtākou and on to Taiaroa Head, before parking my car as carefully as possible at Harrington Point.

The site itself was first constructed in the late 1880s, when the good people of Dunedin were convinced the Russian Empire was about to sail in and start something dreadful. The whole complex, observation posts, underground tunnels, magazines, engine rooms and all was built in earnest anticipation of a war that, of course, never came. Still, it must have made for excellent local gossip at the time.

That afternoon I wandered, tripped and scrambled my way around the remains, occasionally losing my footing and my sense of direction but never my curiosity. The incoming tide lapped at the rocks below the cliffs as I explored the old stairwells and passageways, hoping to stumble upon some long-forgotten relic. From one weathered doorway a narrow stairwell led deeper underground, connecting a warren of echoing tunnels and rusting fittings that once formed the nerve centre of Dunedin’s defences.

It’s an amazingly fun and oddly peaceful coastline, part history lesson, part playground with seabirds and seals forever close to hand, as if they, too, were keeping watch for something that might not arrive.