Daily Photo – Gun Emplacements at Harrington Point

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, I recently wandered out to the gun emplacements at Harrington Point. Some people go to the beach, others enjoy a café. I apparently head straight for nineteenth century military architecture and hope the tide behaves itself.

The road out is classic Otago Peninsula travel. You lope past Macandrew Bay, Broad Bay and Portobello, each looking as though it had been arranged just slightly better than the last, until you reach Harrington Point where you try very hard to park your car “considerately”. This is New Zealand, so the definition of considerate is flexible – on this occasion I aimed for mildly annoying.

The fortifications were built in the 1880s when Dunedin became convinced the Russian Empire was about to stage a dramatic entrance. Quite how the Russians were expected to find us remains a mystery, given we sit in the Pacific like a crumb that fell off the edge of somebody’s biscuit. Still, enthusiasm trumped logic and a maze of tunnels, magazines and engine rooms was carved into the hillside.

Exploring the place today is great fun. You duck into passageways where the air echoes, climb staircases that lead to nowhere in particular and start to wonder how any invading navy would get past the seals who survey the area like slightly disinterested security staff. One seal gave me a look that seemed to say “good luck mate, you will twist your ankle before any Russians get you”.

The whole area feels like a half-forgotten relic from a time when New Zealand thought it was more strategically important than it probably was. Yet that is exactly why it is so charming. It is history wrapped in optimism, resting above a coastline that insists on being explored when the tide is right.