Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Station 385 is a heritage-listed former anti-aircraft defence and gun emplacement at 50 Pritchard Street, Lytton, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1943 by the Allied Works Council. It is also known as Lytton Heavy Anti-Aircraft battery emplacement and Gun Station 385. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 June 2019.
History
Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) Gun Station 385 was constructed at Lytton in 1943 to defend Brisbane against Japanese air attack during World War II (WWII), replacing a 1942 gun station at Colmslie. The Lytton area, on the southeast side of the Brisbane River mouth and part of the traditional land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, has long played a part in the defence of Queensland. In 2019, Gun Station 385 is located within the Caltex oil refinery to the east of Fort Lytton National Park, and retains: four above-ground gun emplacements for 3.7 inch (94mm) anti-aircraft guns, consisting of octagonal gun pits, formed of cinder blocks and concrete, surrounded on seven sides by earth revetments; and a semi-underground concrete command post, comprising an underground plotting room and an adjacent open concrete pit with three compartments. It has the most intact gun emplacements of the eight known 3.7 inch gun stations active in Brisbane between 1942 and 1944, and is also one of the most visible and intact 3.7 inch gun stations in Queensland.
Although WWII started in September 1939, Australia was under little threat of air attack until late 1941. On 8 December 1941, the United States of America entered the war, following the previous day's bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour by Japanese carrier-borne aircraft. Simultaneously, Japanese forces launched assaults on Thailand, the Philippines and the British colony of Malaya. The sudden fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 and the rapid Japanese advance through the islands of the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) raised fears of air attacks on Australia. The first Japanese air raid on Darwin in the Northern Territory occurred on 19 February 1942, while air raids on Broome in Western Australia occurred on 3 March 1942. Japanese air raids on other targets in Australia seemed likely, and an invasion of Australia was also feared. The attack on Darwin was carried out by aircraft launched from four of the six aircraft carriers involved in the attack on Pearl Harbour, plus land-based aircraft flying from the NEI. Casualties at Broome included Dutch civilians, evacuated from the NEI, who were killed when their flying boats were strafed and sunk in Roebuck Bay. Japan briefly considered invading Australia (an idea promoted by the Imperial Japanese Navy, but rejected by the Japanese Army due to a lack of resources) before shelving that option in March 1942, in favour of isolating Australia from the United States by capturing Port Moresby, and later Fiji, New Caledonia and the Samoan Islands.
Due to its position in the north of Australia, Queensland was at risk of land-based air attack (launched from airfields in the NEI or New Guinea), as well as attacks launched from aircraft carriers. As a result of the growing fear of Japanese air raids, the Queensland Government issued the Protection of Persons and Property Order No.1, gazetted 23 December 1941, which ordered the Brisbane City Council (BCC), and other local authorities near the coast, to build air raid shelters. All Queensland coastal state schools were closed in late January 1942, and although most reopened on 2 March 1942, student attendance was optional until the war ended. A policy of voluntary evacuation of women and children from Queensland coastal areas was also implemented on 27 January 1942.