The Albert Park tunnels are found largely beneath Albert Park, in central Auckland, New Zealand. The tunnels were constructed as air raid shelters during the Second World War. At the conclusion of the war they were sealed to prevent vandalism or misuse by the public, and as a protection against carbon dioxide build-up or tunnel collapse.
New Zealand's involvement in the war began in 1939, and with Axis naval activity occurring in New Zealand waters, domestic defence plans were necessary, with much capital being invested. Matters became urgent with the entry of Japan into the war in 1941.
A number of coastal defences were already in place throughout the country, with a concentration in Auckland, and Auckland City Council felt the need for air raid shelters in the central city, in preparation for Japanese attack. Work began in December 1941, and by January 1942, 16,300 feet of slit trenches had been dug around the city. [1] Additional shelters were created in basements, the Domain, Grafton Gully, and the old Parnell railway tunnel. [2]
Auckland city centre had a daytime population of 70,000, but by April 1942 shelter capacity was only 20,000. [2] Furthermore, experience in Britain during the Blitz indicated that deep shelters provided greater protection. [2] Due to its topography and central location, Albert Park – a communal facility built in the 1880s on the site of an 1840s army barracks [3] – was chosen as the site for a major construction. In 1942 a large complex of tunnels and shelters was established under the park, [4] capable of sheltering 20,400 people. [5]
The tunnels were designed by city engineer James Tyler, and were estimated to cost £120,000 (about £6 per head), with £90,000 of the cost met by the government and the rest by Auckland City. With planned shifts running twenty-four hours, the work was expected to take four to six months. [2] Work began in February, with up to 300 men in gangs working three shifts a day six days a week, and the digging was completed in August. [6] Carpentry and plumbing, at additional cost, was added over the following two months. [6] The tunnels were officially opened by Mayor John Allum in October 1942.
There are more than 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) of tunnels, [7] reaching from Constitution Hill to Wellesley Street, involving a network of shelters, sanitation facilities and first aid posts, all ventilated by air shafts, [8] with a total of nine entrances. [6] The tunnels run through sandstone and volcanic rock, and were mainly dug by hand by a team of 114 council workers, most of whom were middle-aged men who were unfit for war. The tunnels were lined with over 975 km of New Zealand native timber, including Kauri, Heart Rimu, Larch and New Zealand Stringy Bark. [5] A total of 315 people were involved with this project. [6]
The central, arched access tunnels were 9 ft high (2.7 m), 15 ft wide (4.6 m), and 3,700 ft long (1,100 m); the grid of accommodation galleries – totalling 6,000 ft (1,800 m) – were 7 ft (2.1 m) square and provided with wooden seating. [6] The floors were covered with scoria. [6]
The tunnel complex, unlike many other air raid shelter complexes, does not have blast doors, but instead has baffles. The baffle is a block in a tunnel constructed from wood, lead and stone to absorb the shock wave in the event of a bomb blast. The small tunnels around them allowed passage and reduced the shock with the perpendicular reflections.[ citation needed ]
A diesel engine from an old meatworks powered the ventilation fans and emergency lighting, [6] as well as a loud-speaker system. [5]
The expected air raids did not happen, and with the tunnels unused, by the end of 1943 the timber supports were beginning to fail. By February 1945, without the money to upgrade or convert the tunnels to other use, plans were made to fill them in. [9] The tunnels were filled in with 8.8 million unfired clay blocks made by Crum Brick and Tile in New Lynn. It took 15 men a total of 12 months to complete the back-filling process and the entrances were sealed and buried by 18 April 1946.
Since then, a number of schemes have been proposed to make use of reopened tunnels. In the 1960s there were newspaper articles proposing ideas, and interest was renewed in the 1990s by two groups: a businessman seeking to open them as a tourism venture, and a group of architecture students with their lecturer who considered the tunnels might offer a solution to Auckland's traffic problems. [10]
In 1996, the city council signed a contract with tourism promotor William Reid, giving him permission to unseal the tunnels and perform an inspection, with a view to developing a tourist attraction. [8] Related legislation was passed in 2001. [11]
In 2005, subsidence occurred within the park, due to the collapse of in-fill soil within the old ventilation shafts. [12] Blocked entrances can be seen at the top of Victoria Street – hidden by a decorative wall – and the steel door present at the foot of Constitution Hill. [5] Three other blocked entrances are located behind the Park's Gateway sculpture. [13]
As of June 2012, two Auckland residents Bill Reid and Mark Howarth, were working on plans to have the first 25m of tunnel five excavated in order to create a museum depicting its history. However, Auckland Council advised that no investigations had been carried out with regards to work required to reopen the tunnels. [14]
In January 2017, Reid was engaged in meetings with Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) and campaigning for the tunnels to be reopened as a tourist attraction and as a direct link for walkers and cyclists between Victoria Street and Parnell. [15]
The London deep-level shelters are eight deep-level air-raid shelters that were built under London Underground stations during World War II.
Mount Albert is an inner suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, which is centred on Ōwairaka / Mount Albert, a local volcanic peak which dominates the landscape. By 1911, growth in the area had increased to the point where Mount Albert was declared an independent borough, which was later absorbed into Auckland. The suburb is located 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) to the southwest of the Auckland City Centre.
Western Springs is a residential suburb in the city of Auckland in the north of New Zealand. It is located four kilometres to the west of the city centre, Auckland CBD. The park is situated to the north of State Highway 16 and the residential suburb is located southeast of the park on the opposite side of State Highway 16.
Waitematā railway station, formerly known as Britomart Transport Centre, is the public transport hub in the central business district of Auckland and the northern terminus of the North Island Main Trunk railway line. It combines a railway station in a former Edwardian post office, extended with expansive modernist architectural elements, with a bus interchange. It is at the foot of Queen Street, the main commercial thoroughfare of the CBD, with the main ferry terminal just across Quay Street.
Albert Park is a public park in central Auckland, bounded by Wellesley Street East, Princes Street, Bowen Avenue and Kitchener Street. From the entrance at the corner of Bowen Ave and Kitchener St, sealed footpaths climb steeply through native trees to the large flat area at the summit, where a formal layout of paths and flower gardens encircle a fountain.
Morningside is a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. It lies four kilometres south-west of the city centre, close to Eden Park and Western Springs Reserve.
Berlin Hermannstraße is a railway station in the Neukölln district of Berlin. It is served by the S-Bahn lines S41, S42, S45, S46 and S47 and the U-Bahn line U8, of which it is the southern terminus. It was formerly also possible to transfer there to the Neukölln-Mittenwalde railway line, which is now only used for goods traffic.
The Wynyard Quarter is a reclaimed piece of land on the Waitematā Harbour at the western edge of the Auckland waterfront, New Zealand.
The Carrière Wellington is a museum in Arras, northern France. It is named after a former underground quarry which was part of a network of tunnels used by forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the First World War. Opened in March 2008, the museum commemorates the soldiers who built the tunnels and fought in the Battle of Arras in 1917.
Dove-Myer Robinson Park, more commonly known as the Parnell Rose Garden, is a park in Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand. The park is named after Dove-Myer Robinson, the longest-serving mayor of Auckland, who served for 18 years. There are over 5,000 roses in the garden. Some of the plants in the garden have been bred by internationally celebrated rose breeders.
The Fortress of Mimoyecques is the modern name for a Second World War underground military complex built by the forces of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944. It was intended to house a battery of fixed V-3 cannons permanently aimed at London, 165 kilometres (103 mi) away. Originally codenamed Wiese ("Meadow") or Bauvorhaben 711, it is located in the commune of Landrethun-le-Nord in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France, near the hamlet of Mimoyecques about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from Boulogne-sur-Mer. It was constructed by a mostly German workforce recruited from major engineering and mining concerns, augmented by prisoner-of-war slave labour.
The Parnell Tunnel is a railway tunnel under Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand. It is 344.5 metres (1,130 ft) long, and is on the Newmarket Line.
The City Rail Link (CRL) is a rail project currently under construction in Auckland, New Zealand. The project consists of a 3.5 km (2.2 mi) long double-track rail tunnel underneath Auckland's city centre, between Waitematā (Britomart) and Maungawhau railway stations. Two new underground stations will be constructed to serve the city centre: Te Waihorotiu near Aotea Square and Karanga-a-Hape near Karangahape Road. Waitematā will be converted from a terminus station into a through station, and Mount Eden station will be replaced by Maungawhau station, a new station with four platforms to serve as an interchange between the new CRL line and the existing Western Line.
The Home Guard was a wartime armed service during World War II that was established with the primary objective of defending New Zealand from the threat posed by the Empire of Japan.
Albert Park (North) air raid shelter is a heritage-listed former air raid shelter at Albert Park, Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Frank Gibson Costello and built c. 1942 by Brisbane City Council. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 31 May 2005.
Albert Park (South) air raid shelter is a heritage-listed former air raid shelter at Albert Park, Upper Albert Street, Brisbane City, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Frank Gibson Costello and built c. 1942 by Brisbane City Council. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 31 May 2005.
The Albert Barracks was a major British military installation that overlooked Auckland, New Zealand, from the mid-1840s to 1870, during the city's early colonial period. The perimeter wall was built between 1846 and the early 1850s, in the area now bounded by Kitchener Street, Waterloo Quadrant, Symonds Street, and Wellesley Street East, according to Colonel Thomas Rawlings Mould's 1860 map of Defensible Works round Auckland. The site is now mostly occupied by Albert Park and the University of Auckland's City Campus, and Princes Street runs through the centre of it. All that remains of the barracks structures is part of the perimeter wall, which is on the university campus.
The Albert Park Volcano was one of the volcanoes in the Auckland volcanic field in New Zealand. A small volcano that erupted approximately 145,000 years ago, the volcanic remnants were quarried during the early colonial history of Auckland between 1840 and 1869. The volcano was dwarfed by the pre-volcanic sandstone ridge of Albert Park directly to the south-east, and only recognised as volcanic by Ferdinand von Hochstetter when he visited Auckland in 1859.
Western Springs Reserve, also known as Western Springs Lakeside Te Wai Ōrea, consists of a sanctuary for wildlife, surrounding a lake fed by the natural springs. There are walking paths surrounding the lake with bridges going across sections of it. Auckland Zoo, Museum of Transport & Technology and Western Springs Stadium are all situated around the park.