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RAAF heritage

An RAAF gunnery range and a radar station are among five new places dating from the 1930s and ’40s to be given provisional listing on the South Australian Heritage Register.

The Port Pirie gunnery range, the Cape Jervis radar station, Woodards House in Waymouth St, Woodlands apartments in Jeffcott Street and an administration building at the former Tubemakers’ site at Kilburn have all been provisionally added.

Member of the South Australian Heritage Council Register Committee, Dr Peter Bell, said the old World War II gunnery range at Port Pirie was significant as one of the best-preserved wartime RAAF relics in South Australia.

“This is a very rare, and perhaps even unique, surviving example of the measures adopted for defence training in Australia during the 1940s,” Dr Bell said.

“It was designed to be targeted by fighter planes approaching from the north-east, so they could fire safely out to sea.”

Positioned on a low coastal sand ridge, the range is made up of six numbered target frames and a concrete shelter booth for the range attendant.

Dr Bell said the former RAAF No. 10 Radar Station at the top of Campbell Hill, Cape Jervis, was one of the two best-preserved wartime radar station sites in the state.

“It is also one of only two lightweight air warning (LWAW) radar stations brought into operation in South Australia during World War II,” he said.

“It used the newly-developed LWAW radar system, which was more portable and had a longer range, allowing it to provide protection to the sea approaches to Adelaide and the Spencer Gulf’s industrial cities.”

The station includes a number of buildings and a camp site about a kilometre away. During the war, all the structures were camouflaged to look like farm buildings.

Woodards House in Waymouth St, Adelaide, is considered to be one of the most important works of prominent local architect F. Kenneth Milne.

Built in 1928-29 as the state head office of the Norwich Union Fire Insurance Society, the building exemplifies what is known as the inter-war commercial palazzo style.

Dr Bell said North Adelaide’s Woodlands apartment building was one of the first apartment blocks in Adelaide.

“When Woodlands was completed in 1940, multiple residence buildings were relatively new to Adelaide,” Dr Bell said.

“They were only just starting to become popular in Sydney and Melbourne, so this is one of the few local examples of such an early apartment building.”

An excellent example of the functionalist style of architecture from the inter-war period, Woodlands combines what were then modern design features and innovative materials such as reinforced concrete, glass bricks and curved glass.

The former Tubemakers of Australia Administration Building No. 2 on Churchill Rd at Kilburn is historically significant as it represents the expansion of secondary industry in SA in the late 1930s and during World War II.

“Production of tubes for aircraft guns and warships’ boilers began at the Kilburn site within days of the outbreak of the war,” Dr Bell said.

“The administration building was completed in 1942 and is also significant for being a well-executed example of an industrial office building of the era.”

The asymmetrical building is constructed in the functionalist style has walls of curved brick and metal-framed ribbon windows.

Under the Heritage Places Act 1993, any person has the right to comment on whether a provisional entry to the SA Heritage Register should be made permanent.

The SA Heritage Council will consider all written submissions received before close of business on 17 May 2012.

Please send submissions to:

Executive Officer
South Australian Heritage Council
GPO Box 1047
Adelaide SA 5011

More information is available by telephoning 8124 4951 or online at http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/Heritage/SA_Heritage_Register/Additions_and_alterations.