East Point Outfall

Power and Water Corporation, Northern Territory

Location
Darwin, NT
Date
2014

Archaeology

When Power and Water Corporation proposed an upgrade to the sewage outfall at East Point, Darwin, Cosmos Archaeology was the heritage consultancy firm of choice to provide a range of assessment services. These included desktop studies, remote sensing surveys and dive inspections to provide a thorough Heritage Impact Assessment and an Unexploded Ordinance Survey. Nine shipwrecks, ten aircraft wrecks and numerous types of unexploded ordinances were identified in the desktop assessment as potentially being present.  Remote sensing identified a total of 134 targets which were inspected by a commercial dive team and a pedestrian survey team. Eleven targets were found to contain culturally significant objects. This included more than two hundred star pickets which were the remains of barbed wire coastal defences relating to the East Point Battery during the 1930s and 1940s. These artefacts, along with a ‘Singapore-type’ observation post were assessed to be of moderate significance.

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