The Russians are coming!

We can learn much from the heavy metal and concrete fortifications at Portland, Port Fairy and Warrnambool. The story behind their construction informs Australian identity and our perceived place in the world. As the song reminds us, History Repeats . . .

Part 1

The sun blazes white hot in an azure sky. A sea breeze puffs over the grassy reserve behind the dunes and ruffles reeds in the saltmarsh. A man launches a rainbow kite and his son zooms it high to join a dozen others in colourful overcast. A camel train with children swaying on humps makes stately progress around the fence. Grownups gather in chattering packs around picnic feasts spread on the grass, while kids ignore calls to eat. A pelican spirals up lazily from the wetland on a buoyant bubble of air. What an idyllic way to spend a New Year’s Day.

Suddenly a deep rumbling boom breaks the spell. Birds screech into flight. Barking dogs scatter. Toddlers grasp parents’ hands. The boy’s kite crashes with a thump as heads turn to look for the source of this thunderous intrusion. What on earth was that?

Soon the background babble of holidaymakers resumes, the interruption forgotten. But the boy wants to know more and sits down with his granddad. He’ll know. He always does.

‘What was that, Pop?'

A smile unfolds across the old man’s face. ‘It’s the historical society firing the midday gun. In the old days they did it every day so that you could set your watch by it. The old guns are up on Battery Hill. Let’s go and explore.’

So the three generations set off across the river, past the boatyard, slip and piers til they reach the hill. It is a steep climb and as they look up, two huge guns loom above them. Stout barrels point out to sea, as though ready for action. The acrid smell of gunpowder catches in their nostrils. As they approach, the group is swallowed behind the concrete and brick structure carved deep into the hillside. Rusty iron hatches shield entrances to dark mysterious passages.

‘It’s a fort,’ exclaims the boy. ‘What’s it doing here?’

Pop sits in an alcove marked Cartridge Recess and looks at his grandson through mischievous crinkly eyes. The boy’s dad chuckles at the prospect of yet another tale.

‘The Russians are coming,’ says the old man, adding more crinkles.

"they shall not pass"
successful fixed defences deter attacks
so did Portland Battery fulfill its prime directive?

Gold! Gold! Gold!

Arguably the single most significant episode to shape the Australia we know today occurred in Victoria in the 1850s.

The first successful European community in the region was established at Portland in the early 1830s. But it wasn’t until 1851 that Victoria became a name and place in its own right, when it was declared a separate colony from New South Wales. The timing was auspicious because events soon had the name Victoria on everyone’s lips. A precious yellow metal was discovered at Clunes and Bendigo. Soon, it was turning up all over the place. Gold fever erupted.

The newly declared Colony of Victoria blazed bright in newspaper headlines all over the world. From royal courts and foreign offices to the lowliest labourers in the workhouses, everyone talked about this strange land at the bottom of the world.

One of the biggest gold rushes in history was on. A huge influx of people arrived on these shores seeking their fortunes. At the beginning of 1850, only 76,000 people lived in Victoria. By 1860 there had been a sevenfold increase to 540,000.

Fortunes were made and fortunes were lost. The diggers left their indelible mark on the maps: Hundredweight Hill and Nuggetty Flat; Poverty Run and Three Speck Gully; the Berlin Diggings and the Caledonia Goldfield.

relic of the Nepoleonic wars;
training piece of the Victorian Volunteer Artillery
32 pdr smooth-bore muzzle loader on garrison carriage
Carron Iron Works Scotland 1811

In those 10 years, Victoria produced 20 million ounces, the weight of 31 W-class trams representing one third of the world’s output of gold. By the turn of the century, two percent of the gold mined in the history of civilisation came out of the Victorian landscape.

In the Western District, large deposits were found at Ballarat, Beaufort, Ararat, Moyston and Stawell. The miners flooded in.

But how to transport all the people, plant, equipment and supplies that were necessary to exploit this windfall? Distances to Melbourne were often considerable. The network of roads was poor and their condition crude. Railways were still a dream.

The harbours of Warrnambool, Port Fairy and Portland became vital transport hubs. It was easier to move things by sea than overland, especially big bulky industrial plant. People, supplies and equipment came in, gold and agricultural produce went out. Each town became the centre of a radiating network of roads serving the inland areas to the north. Breakwaters, docks, cranes, warehouses and slipways were built.

Great wealth soon accumulated. Across the colony, thriving communities sprang up. Towns were built to house the new population. Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo became showpieces of 19th century town planning and displayed civic architecture on a grand scale. Great engineering works were undertaken, like the railway network and Melbourne’s aqueducts. All kinds of intelligentsia, from academics to artists, were attracted to this marvellous place in the southern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, with fame and fortune came fear. As soon as the security and comfort of material wealth was established, so the associated insecurities seemed to fester and multiply. It is perhaps human nature to think: ‘Now we’ve got something valuable, someone is bound to try to take it from us.’

But who or what posed a threat to the Colony of Victoria?

Was war likely in the most powerful empire the world had ever seen?

Would the new and glittering prizes lure marauding raiders to this out-of-the-way place?

first wave of southwest coastal fortification 1867
68 pdr smooth-bore muzzle loader
on traversing wooden fortress platform
Lowmoor Iron Works England 1861

The horror

On 29 June 1888, the telegraph cable between Darwin and Java was cut. The immediate conclusion was that a hostile power had severed communications and an attack was imminent. An alert was issued throughout Victoria. Warships were dispatched. Forts were garrisoned and sealed off. All was in place to repel the invader.

Twelve days later, the maintenance ship SS Recorder tentatively surveyed the cable that ran along the seabed. Several breaks were found and repaired. The chief engineer reported that the damage was not caused by mechanical means but the result of seismic shock from a volcano on Java.

Soldiers and sailors across the colony sighed in relief and went home to their families.

This was a typical manifestation of the siege mentality that reigned in certain quarters. You might think that distance was viewed as a welcome buffer to aggressive machinations half a world away in Europe. But it wasn’t. For some, the remoteness of the Victorian coast was perceived as an open invitation for hostile powers to do as they wished out of the sight and ken of other nations. As imperial rivalries ebbed and flowed across continents, oceans and peoples, so invasion scares echoed in the halls of the Victorian government.

Looking back, it is difficult to determine the extent of the scares. The written record certainly implicates the press, politicians, administrators and to some extent professional military views. But the voracity of these scares has to be questioned. Then as today, the press claimed to represent public opinion. But the mid nineteenth century saw journalism develop further into the Fourth Estate and rely more and more on sensational perspectives and hysterical criticism. Much of the tone of insecurity and outrage may well be editorial construct.

The Argus 6 April 1853:

‘The world knows well that in this poor city there are immense piles of treasure . . . Here in Melbourne, quite unguarded, lie the sinews of war in abundance.’

Then on 20 January 1854:

‘. . . the colonists naturally feel rather uneasy about their own safety. We are not so much “out of the world” as we used to be, and our golden treasures certainly offer some temptation to an invading power.’

the arms race gains momentum;
80 pdr rifled muzzle loader on traversing iron platform
with hydro-pneumatic recuperator 
Royal Gun Foundry England 1866

The villains

For a long time it was the French who were seen as the bogeymen. There was a long tradition of colonial and military rivalry between Britain and France. The Napoleonic Wars were still within living memory and the French sailed in Australian waters.

Frenchmen had taken an active part in exploring Australia’s southeast coast, attracting the nervous attention of the early colonists. Jean-Francois de Galaup, Compte de La Pérouse entered Botany Bay the day after Arthur Phillip’s First Fleet arrived. The forgotten French explorer Nicolas Thomas Baudin is widely acknowledged as the first European to survey the coast between Cape Otway and Portland. The land we know as Australia could have easily been named Terre Napoleon.

In the 1850s, there was renewed mistrust of Louis Napoleon, President of the Second Republic and nephew to Napoleon Bonaparte. He boasted grandiose imperial ambitions as his naval architects developed the world’s first ironclad warship, La Gloire. His navy was active in the nearby Pacific, establishing colonies and bases in New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the New Hebrides. With warships so close, many believed it would be straightforward to attack Victoria.

But it is the Russians who are best remembered as the source of scares. There had long been a deep-seated fear and awe of the vast size of the Russian Empire. Cultural differences fomented mistrust, and the cruel despotic rule of the Tsar alienated British sensibilities.

deadly symmetry or expensive folly?
in fact this artillery was long obsolete
before emplacement in 1887

Russian advances into Afghanistan from the 1830s were seen to threaten the jewel of the British Empire, India. The two disastrous Anglo-Afghani wars that resulted are etched deeply in British military history.

Old enemies kissed and made up when joint interests were threatened by a common foe. The bloody Crimean War erupted in 1853 between Russia and a new British–French alliance of convenience. It was this conflict that stimulated the completion of the iconic Fort Dennison in Sydney Harbour. By 1860, the British were digging in all over the globe. A massive wave of fortification building across the British Empire was instigated under the premiership of Lord Palmerston.

The shadow of the bear next fell on Istanbul in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Shipping access to the Mediterranean for trade and strategic purposes was the motive.

In the Far East, Russia advanced into Manchuria and was threatening the Korean Peninsular to secure ports on the Pacific Rim that were free of ice in winter.

Back in Victoria, the press debated why the Russian Bear continued to seek access to the oceans of the world for her warships when she had no colonies to protect. Surely it was an aggressive move, a prelude to seizing new territory in the Pacific.

Read the exciting conclusion; Part 2 coming soon!