The Sydney Heads (also simply known as the Heads) are a series of

headland A headland, also known as a head, is a coastal landform, a point of land usually high and often with a sheer drop, that extends into a body of water. It is a type of promontory. A headland of considerable size often is called a cape.Whittow, Jo ...

s that form the wide entrance to

Sydney Harbour Port Jackson, commonly known as Sydney Harbour, is a ria, natural harbour on the east coast of Australia, around which Sydney was built. It consists of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove River, Lane ...

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. North Head and Quarantine Head are to the north; South Head and Dunbar Head are to the south; and Middle Head, Georges Head, and Chowder Head are to the west and within the harbour. The Heads are contained within the

Sydney Harbour National Park The Sydney Harbour National Park is an List of national parks of Australia, Australian national park comprising parts of Port Jackson, Sydney and its foreshores and various islands. The national park lies in New South Wales and was created progr ...

. Some features located on the heads are

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and human-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In ma ...

on the

Australian National Heritage List The Australian National Heritage List or National Heritage List (NHL) is a heritage register, a list of National heritage site, national heritage places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia, established in 2003. The li ...

; such as the

Hornby Lighthouse Hornby Lighthouse, also known as South Head Lower Light or South Head Signal Station, is a heritage-listed active lighthouse located on the tip of South Head, New South Wales, Australia, a headland to the north of the suburb Watsons Bay. It mar ...

, located on South Head, Australia's third-oldest lighthouse;

Macquarie Lighthouse The Macquarie Lighthouse, also known as South Head Upper Light, is the first, and is the longest serving, lighthouse site in Australia. It is located on Dunbar Head, on Old South Head Road, Vaucluse in the Municipality of Woollahra local gover ...

, Australia's first lighthouse, located to the south on Dunbar Head; and the former

Quarantine Station A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been ...

on North Head.

North Head

North Head is a headland south-east of the suburb of Manly. It is part of Sydney Harbour National Park. The headland is a promontory of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

and is in area.

Sydney Quarantine station

The heritage-listed former Quarantine Station is located on North Head and is one of the few facilities that operated in each state of Australia from the mid-to-late-1800s until the 1980s. From 1828, Spring Cove, on the western side of North Head, was used to

quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have bee ...

new arrivals to Sydney to minimise the spread of

communicable diseases infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable disea ...

such as

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...

and

whooping cough Whooping cough ( or ), also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious, Vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine-preventable Pathogenic bacteria, bacterial disease. Initial symptoms are usually similar to those of the common c ...

, amongst other communicable diseases. In 1832, the whole area of North Head was set aside for a quarantine station. A permanent quarantine facility was set up in 1837 and continued to operate until 1984. The buildings and site was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 2 April 1999, the entire North Head site to the

on 12 May 2006, and now forms part of the

. The site contains the remnants of Colonial New South Wales period buildings and equipment which were the best available means of combating major contagious diseases and hygiene-related conditions brought to the colony by ship. Soon after Federation the Commonwealth Government initiated a major building and infrastructure program which also remains largely intact today. This program included similar, but smaller, quarantine stations around Australian ports, of which North Head is the only remaining example. This site dealt with major shipping-related epidemic outbreaks which took place up until the 1940s. As such, the quarantine complex represents one of the most complete collection of buildings, equipment and a setting showing how life was lived among the struggles and successes in public health of Australia's past. After 1945 the requirements for quarantine changed to small air-travel family groups serving periods of observation due to a lack of required inoculations. To these groups the site provided a scenic haven in a rustic historic setting. Many of the inscriptions on the local sandstone outcrops record the names and reasons why previous colonial and latter occupants found themselves in such a place. The buildings remain much as they had been in a former age and provided an opportunity for air-travel 'patients' to become acquainted with a unique collection of historic ephemera. In 1970 the then Officer-in-Charge at the station, Herbert Lavaring, was awarded a Queens Birthday Honors Award (BEM) for his efforts in keeping the historic site preserved while also creating a practical, enriching environment for patients and the public to enjoy. The steam-powered laundry and fumigation autoclaves are a unique collection of industrial technology from the past; they provide an insight into the technology required to deal with combating hygiene-related and other readily communicable diseases in an age before antibiotics and vaccinations. In 1975,

Vietnamese refugees Vietnamese boat people () were refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but continued well into the earl ...

were housed there, and in 1975 and 1976,

Cyclone Tracy Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy was a small but destructive tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, in December 1974. The small but developing easterly storm was or ...

victims from

Darwin, Northern Territory Darwin ( Larrakia: ') is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. The city has nearly 53% of the Northern Territory's population, with 139,902 at the 2021 census. It is the smallest, wettest, and most northerly of the Australi ...

were also housed there. The station was finally closed in 1984 and the management of the site passed to the

NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is a directorate of the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment and responsible for managing more than 890 national parks and reserves, covering over 7.5 million hectares of land ac ...

. The facility is now a tourist facility and part of the former Quarantine Station may be leased for accommodation. The nearby Inner North Head clifftops have many inscriptions from the quarantine period as well as the remnants of 1940s coastal defenses in the form of two gun sites, a range-sighting post, four ammunition storage bunkers and a fortified outhouse. This location has been the site of erosion and geo-technical instability. It may be subject to natural rockfalls as the erosion process continues.

Defence facilities

From 1934, defence facilities were installed on the headland but were wound down in 1945. From 1953, there was a School of

Artillery Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...

, which used the former defence facilities. The harbour reserve was established in 1979. The School of Artillery relocated to

Puckapunyal Puckapunyal (more formally the Puckapunyal Military Area, but also known as the Puckapunyal Camp or Puckapunyal Army Base, and colloquially as "Pucka") is an Australian Army training facility and base 10 km west of Seymour, Victoria, Seym ...

army base in Victoria in 1998, but an artillery museum remained on the headland. In 2001, the site was passed to the

Sydney Harbour Federation Trust The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust ("Harbour Trust") is an Australian Government agency established in 2001 to preserve and rehabilitate a number of defence and other Commonwealth lands in and around Sydney Harbour. The Trust has been focused o ...

for management. In 2010 the artillery collection was moved to

The Army Museum Bandiana The Army Museum Bandiana is dedicated to collecting, housing, displaying military equipment, weapons and vehicles associated with the Australian Army. It is the largest and most diversified military museum in Australia The museum is based within A ...

Bandiana Bandiana is a Suburb of the City of Wodonga local government area in northeast Victoria, Australia. History Bandiana takes its name from the early name for the area, probably from a First Nations toponym. The hill now known as Bears Hill appea ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

; the Trust plans to establish an exhibition on the defence of Sydney on the site. There are still remains of the gun emplacements and artificial tunnels used by the army, many of which can be seen by the public or on guided tours.

Australian Institute of Police Management

Also located on North Head is the Australian Institute of Police Management, housed in a secure compound which has been the 'Seamen's Quarters' of the quarantine station, a place where sailors with acquired STIs were treated and securely confined behind high sandstone walls (prior to the development of modern antibiotics).

South Head

South Head is a headland, part of Sydney Harbour National Park, to the north of the suburb of

Watsons Bay Watsons Bay is a harbourside, Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Watsons Bay is located 11 km north-east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, ...

. A twenty-minute foreshore walk on the South Head Heritage Trail offers dramatic views of Middle Head, Manly, North Head and the Tasman Sea. Starting at the delightful Camp Cove Beach, an 1870s cobblestone path leads first to Lady Bay (also known as Lady Jane) Beach, one of three in Sydney where nude bathing is lawful. It then loops around the headland, passing Hornby Lighthouse, its lightkeepers' cottages, and several gun emplacements from the end of the 19th century. HMAS ''Watson'', the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the navy, naval branch of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (Australia), Chief of Navy (CN) Vice admiral (Australia), Vice Admiral Mark Hammond (admiral), Ma ...

training base, is also located at South Head.

Middle Head

Middle Head is a headland between North Head and South Head, beside

Middle Harbour Middle Harbour (or ''Warrin ga''), a semi-mature tide dominated drowned valley estuary, is the northern arm of Port Jackson, an inlet of the Tasman Sea located north of Sydney central business district on the coast of New South Wales, Australi ...

. It is part of Sydney Harbour National Park. Middle Head has an extensive network of defence fortifications and tunnels, including the

Middle Head Fortifications The Middle Head Fortifications is a heritage-listed former defence establishment and military fortifications and now public space located at Middle Head Road, Middle Head, in the Mosman Council local government area of New South Wales, Austral ...

, the

Georges Head Battery The Georges Head Battery, also called the Georges Head Military Fortifications, is a heritage-listed former military fortification located on the Georges Head on Chowder Bay Road, Georges Heights, New South Wales, Australia. The site consis ...

and the Lower Georges Heights Commanding Position and other forts located around Sydney Harbour. The fortifications feature "Tiger Cages", where the military trained soldiers by simulating prisoner of war conditions in Vietnam. HMAS ''Penguin'' is located at Middle Harbour.

Heritage listings

Middle Head has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: * Middle Head Road:

References

External links

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] *

] *{{website, http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-a-park/parks/sydney-harbour-national-park, Sydney Harbour National Park at the

New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is a directorate of the Government of New South Wales, New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment (New South Wales), Department of Planning and Environment and responsible for managing ...

Headlands of New South Wales Geography of Sydney Sydney Harbour Australian National Heritage List Sydney Harbour National Park Watsons Bay, New South Wales