was ready on 5 April 1942. RAAF radar men took the piano-sized cabinets to Tomaree Head and yanked them up to the summit. The station was on the air by 12 April 1942 and was reporting the positions of aircraft. Tomaree radar was also able to detect ships; the station reported the location of the Japanese submarine that shelled Newcastle on 8 June 1942. Fortifications and functions The WWII gun emplacements and related structures on Tomaree Head were established from 1941 as part of a system for the defence of the east coast of Australia. The sites are remnants of a system of defence for the protection of Newcastle and Port Stephens - important enough to warrant its establishment as a separate fire command. It includes sites that were developed for heavy gun emplacements, light weapons and machine gun pits, torpedo tubes, search light stations, No. 20 Radar Station RAAF, barbed wire and stake defence, a command post and barracks and other miscellaneous buildings. Parts of the headland were cleared. Services such as power and water were provided. Many of the sites have become overgrown. In 1989 the doors of the heavy gun emplacements were welded shut. Before 1939 the Fort Tomaree site was virtually in its natural state and the area had no water and no power or major services of any description, until installed by the RAAF, AIF and RAN, for their own, and US Army and US Navy, use. The population expanded to many hundreds in the space of a few years. The entire Fort Tomaree headland has, in the main, been an undisturbed and relatively protected area because of its occupation by the NSW Government Health Department. This Government protection has ensured that only relatively little serious damage has been done to these fortifications since the end of World War 2. The coastal defences comprised: Australian Army seafront and beach front installation including observation posts, radar installations, command and control areas including plotting room data coordination, machine gun emplacements, anti-aircraft emplacements, mortars emplacements and three-man weapons pits; RAN seawards defences including minefield observation systems, anti-torpedo nets, hydrophones and torpedo tubes. These were, in general, controlled from the Port War Signal Station situated on Nelson Head RAAF radar station at the peak of the Tomaree Headland reported its plots of aircraft to No. 2 Fighter Sector in Newcastle. Any necessary commands would then be given to RAAF