What's New
21/01/2024 - Extra aerial photos added to the Chamberlain Park AA Battery article, a plan added for the Timaru Battery, new plans and vertical aerial photos for Whangaparaoa Battery and plans for Waiheke Battery, many maps and plans added for Fort Dorset, later vertical aerial photos for Tomahawk Battery, a couple of new photos for St Clair Battery, a couple of new photos for Taiaroa Head and some photos of the camp at Fort Takapuna.
02/01/2024 - Significant update adding many aerial photos, particularly to the AA battery sites in Auckland.
01/01/2024 - General update to the formating across the website. Separated out the aerial photos for each site, with different pages for the oblique and vertical aerials.
27/08/2023 - New aerials and photos for Palmer Head Fortress, Fort Dorset and the AA batteries on Tinakori Hill, Point Halswell and Mt Victoria.
06/08/2023 - New aerials and photos for Fort Kelburne, a new historic plan for Godley Head.
10/06/2023 - Extensive new historic photos for Fort Dorset, new 1960 aerial for Palmer Head, new plan and photo of Point Halswell, new plan and photo for the Johnsonville AA Battery, new plan for the St Clair Battery, new photos for Fort Buckley, new photos for Whekenui Battery in Marlborough Sounds, new photo for Gardens Battery and Fort Ballance.
03/06/2023 - Extensive new historic photos and plans for Battery Point and Fort Jervois (Ripapa Island) added online, along with new historic photos of the Mt Pleasant Heavy AA Battery.
27/05/2023 - Updates to the articles for the Gisborne, Kau Point and Fort Ballance articles to reflect recent changes at the sites.
25/02/2023 - New aerial photos for Russell Battery, Fort Victoria, North Head, Kau Point Battery, Fort Ballance, Fort Dorset, Palmer Head Fortress, Ocean Beach Battery and St Clair Battery. The Fort Ballance and Palmer Head ones are particularly interesting as they are quite high detail and show the sites in 1964 and 1967 shortly before demolition work was carried out.
20/02/2023 - Correction to the Fort Jervois article, noting that the fort is accessible again.
15/02/2023 - New photo of the gun in place at Erskine Point in the 1920s added.
26/07/2022 - Rearranged the anti-aircraft articles for Auckland and Wellington so they are grouped together on their own sub page. New high detail aerial photos from the 1970s and 1980s added for the Brooklyn AA Battery, Fort Ballance, Fort Buckley, Fort Dorset, Gardens Battery and Palmer Head Fortress.
28/06/2022 - New photos for Fort Dorset, Palmer Head and Point Halswell.
11/06/2022 - Replaced the maps on the main articles with new format ones, added a map showing the location of all the Secondary Port defences across New Zealand. A plan for the Mt Pleasant AA Battery has also been added.
05/06/2022- new plans and photos added to the Fort Ballance, Fort Buckley, Fort Dorset, Fort Kelburne, Fort Opau, Gardens Battery, Point Halswell Battery, Napier Battery, Russell Battery articles.
28/05/2022 - new plans and aerial photos added to the Johnsonville, Mt Victoria and Point Halswell AA battery articles and Fort Ballance, Fort Buckley, Fort Dorset, Gardens Battery, Kau Point Battery, Palmer Head Fortress, Point Halswell Battery, Wrights Hill Fortress.
27/05/2022 - aerial photos on all the Wellington site pages have been upgraded and quite a few new ones have been added. One extra aerial photo has been added to the Bluff Battery article.
25/05/2022 - historic plans of Fort Kelburne have been added. Thanks go out to Archives NZ for permission to add them to the site!
05/02/2022 - new historic photos added to the Fort Resolution and Spur Point articles.
26/01/2022 - modern photos added to the Erskine Point and Taiaroa Head articles. The Taiaroa Head ones include areas that are not accessible to the public.
25/01/2022 - new aerial photos added for Erskine Point, Spur Point and Battery Point in Lyttelton
24/01/2022 - A general clean up of some of the formatting to make it more consistent across the site.
05/01/2022 - Articles and photos have been added for all other Secondary Ports and a new entry has been added for Great Barrier Island. This competes the major update for the website. I'll look at expanding the text for the site articles at some later point and will add any new images as I come across them.
04/01/2022 - Articles and photos added for Bluff, Gisborne, Greymouth and Manukau Head.
03/01/2022 - Articles and photos added for Akaroa and Bay of Islands.
02/01/2022 - What's New page rearranged so most recent update is at the top.
30/12/2021 - Articles have been updated for North Head, Rangitoto Island, Waiheke Island and Whangaparaoa - extensive new photos and some historic plans have been added. All of the anti-aircraft battery articles have also been updated, which were the last ones that needed doing.
29/12/2021 - Articles have been updated for Fort Bastion, Fort Resolution, Fort Takapuna, Fort Victoria, Motuihe Island and Motutapu Battery - extensive new photos and some historic plans have been added.
28/12/2021 - Extensive new photos and historic plans added for Fort Ballance, Fort Dorset, Gardens Battery, Palmer Head Fortress, Point Halswell Battery and Wrights Hill Fortress.
27/12/2021 - Castor Bay article updated. Also added historic plans for St Clair, Tomahawk, Taiaroa Head and Rerewahine in Dunedin and Battery Point in Lyttelton.
24/12/2021 - Finished updating the Dunedin site pages. A significant number of new photos have been added to all articles. Now, on to Auckland!
22/12/2021 - Finished updating the Lyttelton photos with references and copyright status. Quite a few new photos have also been added to the Battery Point, Spur Point and Godley Head sections.
21/12/2021 - Big update to the Wellington photo pages to provide proper references and note the copyright status of each image. Will roll this out to Lyttelton next.
14/12/2021 - Finished updating the Lyttelton site pages.
24/10/2021 - Finished updating the Wellington site pages.
17/10/2021 - Started updating the images so they can be enlarged. Articles for most of the Wellington sites have been completed. New images are being added to some articles. For the bigger sites, the aerial photos are being separated out onto a stand alone page.
29/08/2021 - Site migrated to Google's new format. I still need to fix the images so they can be enlarged and none of the National Library images are displaying here, although the links are still present.
11/09/2017 - Addition of 1938 aerial photos for most Wellington sites and 1961 aerials for Fort Kelburn and Fort Buckley.
23/07/2017 - Addition of extensive aerial photography covering 1941-1969 for most Wellington sites.
22/02/2015 - Summary of what remains completed for the four main centres.
19/02/2015 - site profiles are now up for the sites in Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Dunedin.