Sit on the sea wall at Mrs Macquaries Chair and look out over the water, and there it is, the squat little sandstone fort with the round tower that every ferry passenger in Sydney knows. Most of us still call it Pinchgut. The official name is Fort Denison, and these days National Parks also use the old Aboriginal name, Muddawahnyuh. I've written short pieces on it before, but I wanted one page that tells the whole story in order, from the rocky island the First Fleet found in 1788 right through to the closed gates and conservation works of 2026.
Here's the short version. Before 1788 it was a small, scrubby sandstone island, a place the harbour people liked to visit. Within weeks of the First Fleet arriving it was used to punish convicts on bread and water, which is where the name Pinchgut is usually said to come from. In 1796 a murderer was hung in chains on a gibbet there. After two American warships slipped into the harbour one night in 1839, convicts were put to work cutting the island down into a gun battery. The Crimean War scare brought Governor Sir William Denison's fort and its Martello tower in the late 1850s. It never fired a shot at an enemy. Instead it became a lighthouse, a tide station, the home of the One O'Clock Gun, a caretaker's house, a wartime anti-aircraft post and finally part of Sydney Harbour National Park.
Mat-te-wan-ye – The Island Before 1788
Long before anyone thought of building a fort, this was a natural sandstone island sitting roughly halfway between the north and south shores of the inner harbour, off the mouth of Woolloomooloo Bay. The 2019 Conservation Management Plan for the fort describes it as about 50 metres wide and 100 metres long, natural sandstone topped with dense scrub. The Dictionary of Sydney says it rose 75 feet, almost 23 metres, above the water. Other write-ups give a lower figure, so I've put the details in the "Where the Sources Disagree" section further down.
The name comes down to us in a few spellings. David Collins, the colony's Judge Advocate, wrote it as Mat-te-wan-ye. Later writers give Muttewai and Muttenwaya, the State Heritage Register lists Mattewanye and Maddawahnyah, and National Parks now uses Muddawahnyuh (said "mud-uh-wahn-yuh"). The Conservation Management Plan says the only known first-hand evidence of how Aboriginal people used the island comes from Collins himself, and it comes out of a grim story. When he described the gibbet put up there in 1796, he added that the spot had "ever been with them a favourite place of resort". The harbour was home to saltwater clans, including the Gadigal on the southern shore, who fished from bark canoes. The islands seem to have been shared ground rather than belonging to any one group.
The visitor Alexander Harris, quoted in the Dictionary of Sydney, later remembered Pinchgut and Garden Island as "two small scrub clad piles of hoary stones, each standing solitary amidst the whistling winds of the Stream".
Rock Island, Convicts Island, Pinchgut
Governor Arthur Phillip called it Rock Island. A First Fleet plan of the harbour drawn in October 1788 labels it "Convicts Island", and that tells you what it was being used for. The colony had no gaol (Sydney Gaol wasn't working until 1797), so a lump of rock surrounded by deep water did the job instead.
The first case we know of came within three weeks of the landing. On 11 February 1788 the new criminal court sat for the first time, and Collins wrote down what happened:
"…a second, for taking some biscuit from another convict, was sentenced to a week's confinement on bread and water, on a small rocky island near the entrance of the cove…"
Collins doesn't name the man. Mollie Gillen's The Founders of Australia, as summarised on People Australia, identifies him as Thomas Hill, a breeches maker who came out on the Friendship. She has him sentenced on 12 February to eight days on Pinchgut in irons on bread and water. The Dictionary of Sydney also names Thomas Hill. Marine Captain Watkin Tench recorded the same bread-and-water ration.
Where the Name Pinchgut Comes From
"Pinchgut" was old sailors' slang for someone mean with food, or for short rations. The story most people tell, and the one with the best early backing, is that the island got the name because convicts were kept there on starvation rations. Joseph Holt, the Irish rebel general, sailed past in January 1800 and wrote in his memoirs (published 1838) that the island:
"…derived its name from the circumstance of sending here, by way of punishment, some of the most incorrigible on the convicts, where being kept upon exceedingly short allowance, according as their crimes deserved, they conferred upon it the name it bears."
David Dickenson Mann, in his 1811 book The Present Picture of New South Wales, gave much the same reason and added that the prisoners "built an oven, the remains of which are yet to be seen". A letter in The Australian of 26 October 1827 said there were plenty of explanations going around, but the best-authenticated was the short rations. The Dictionary of Sydney mentions a second idea: that it was a sailors' term for the narrowest point of a channel, the harbour's "pinch". The Conservation Management Plan says the name came into common use between 1796 and 1804. The first known printed use is in the Sydney Gazette of 30 December 1804.
Francis Morgan and the Gibbet – 1796
The darkest chapter of Pinchgut's convict days is the gibbet. Francis Morgan was an Irish convict who came out on the Sugar Cane in 1793. In 1796 he was convicted of murdering a man on the North Shore, named in later accounts as Simon Raven. Collins records that Morgan was executed at Sydney on 30 November 1796, and the court ordered his body to be hung in chains on the island as a warning to everyone sailing up the harbour:
"The court having ordered that Francis Morgan should be hung in chains upon the small island which is situated in the middle of the harbour, and named by the natives Mat-te-wan-ye, a gibbet was accordingly erected, and he was hung there, exhibiting an object of much greater terror to the natives, than to the white people … his clothes shaking in the wind, and the creaking of his irons … they never trusted themselves near him, nor the spot on which he hung; which, until this time, had ever been with them a favourite place of resort."
Collins writes the way people did then, but the passage tells us something important. The island had been a favourite place for the harbour people right up to 1796, and the gibbet drove them away from it.
The remains stayed up for years. Holt saw what was left of the gibbet in January 1800, "upon which a cooper, belonging to the colony, was executed for a most atrocious murder". George Barrington's 1803 book on the colony pictures the island with the gibbet on top. Mann, writing in 1811, says "a man named Brown" was by then hanging in chains on the same spot. By the time Lieutenant Edward Close painted the island in 1819, the gibbet was gone.
You'll often hear that Morgan's last words were about what a beautiful harbour it was. I've told it myself in an earlier post, but I can't find it in Collins or any other record from the time, so I'd call it a legend. There's an odd postscript, though. In December 1840 the convicts cutting down the island found a skeleton buried between two rocks, and The Australian reported that old hands thought it might be Francis Morgan.
Picnics, Ballast and a Quiet Few Decades
Between the gibbet and the 1840s, Pinchgut was just another harbour rock. By 1820 boatmen were licensed to take paying passengers out to it, people went there to fish, and in 1831 the Sydney Gazette complained that ballast men knocking stone off its cliffs were spoiling the "bleak though beautiful little isle".
The Americans Arrive Unannounced – 1839
Captain George Barney of the Royal Engineers arrived in Sydney in December 1835 and soon reported that the harbour's defences were in a sorry state. By 1838 his department was already eyeing Pinchgut for a tower. What really got things moving was an embarrassing night in 1839.
On 29 November 1839 Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition was off the coast with the Vincennes and the Peacock. Rather than wait for daylight and a pilot, he sailed straight in through the Heads in the dark. One of his officers, William Reynolds, wrote that they anchored off the town at 11 o'clock. Next morning Sydney woke to find two American warships sitting quietly in the harbour, and nobody had seen them come in. They were friendly visitors, but an enemy squadron could have done exactly the same thing and set the town alight.
.jpg)
Cutting Down the Island – 1840 to 1842
In 1840, without waiting for London to say yes, Governor George Gipps approved Barney's plans and gave him 140 convicts. An iron gang was quartered on the island in wooden boxes, and in October 1840 everyone else was banned from landing. London then refused Barney's £5,000 estimate anyway.
The convicts were there for more than two years. Six tried to seize the boats on Christmas Day 1840, and another six got away in January 1841, though four were caught at Liverpool a few days later. Pinchgut also went back to being a punishment. One convict was given 50 lashes and six months in irons on the island for assault, and Barney said the place was "much more dreaded … than either the treadmill or solitary confinement". Under his eye the men carved the old peak down into a flat gun platform ringed by a parapet of solid rock. Guns were sent out as early as February 1842, but in November 1842 London ordered the work stopped.
In February 1841 the Free Press and Commercial Journal had been cheering it on in verse:
"If the French should attempt to invade our fair Port,
We'll not listen long to their blarney,
A few pills from Pinchgut will shorten the sport,
If they once get acquainted with Barney."
Once it stopped, people looked at what was left and hated it. The papers called it "a hideous blot upon our water" and "an unsightly mass of rock". In 1854 a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, written as if by the island herself and signed "Pinguttina", complained she had been "the victim of a designing Colonel of Engineers, who most ruthlessly despoiled me of my charms". John Dunmore Lang never forgave it either. In 1875 he remembered the old island as a "natural ornament of the harbour" and called its destruction "the folly of man". The Dictionary of Sydney counts it among the earliest "heritage issues" in Sydney.
The Crimean War Scare and Governor Denison
For the next ten years Pinchgut sat there half done. When Colonial Architect Edmund Blacket took over the defences for the colony in 1851, he listed it simply as "Commenced 1841 – discontinued".
Then Britain went to war with Russia, and the news reached Sydney in June 1854. Sir William Denison arrived as Governor in January 1855. He was a Royal Engineer himself, and Barney had once served under him in the West Indies. Denison wanted strong works in the inner harbour, including a proper fort on Pinchgut. Lighthouses of Australia quotes him writing that it wasn't really the Russians who worried him, but "our friends the French and our relations the Americans". On 23 August 1855 the Legislative Council voted £16,500 for a battery, tower and barracks on the island.
Building the Fort – 1855 to 1862
Tenders were called in September 1855, and Barney, by now a Lieutenant-Colonel, was put in charge again. The masonry contract went to William Randle, who had worked on the Sydney–Parramatta railway. The sandstone came from Thrupp's quarry at Kurraba Point in Neutral Bay, and the Armidale Express of 2 May 1857 reckoned 8,000 tons of it went into the tower.
By April 1856 the tower was ten feet high. The ADB says Barney laid the keystone of the last arch in the base of the tower on 24 July 1856. That stone, carved with the names of Denison, Barney, Coles, Randle, Price and Carlisle, is still in the magazine. In July 1857 about 50 masons gave their foreman, John Carlisle, a gold signet ring engraved "To Mr John Carlisle as testimonial by the workmen on Pinchgut Island, 1857".
"It consists of a Martello tower, 51 feet high, a battery, a barracks, magazine, stores, &c. … the walls on the outside are 12 feet 8 inches in thickness … It is intended to make this tower useful in times of peace, by erecting on it lanterns, that it may act as a lighthouse."
From Pinchgut to Fort Denison
Plenty of people thought it deserved a better name. In September 1857 "Squeeze-stomach" wrote to the Herald suggesting "Fort Denison", to be rid of the "coarse and vulgar convict-smelling name", while "GK" pushed for "Fort Cook". On 15 October 1857 the government named it Fort Denison in compliment to the Governor. Sydneysiders, being Sydneysiders, kept calling it Pinchgut.
The Martello Tower and the Guns
Martello towers are named after a tower on Mortella Point in Corsica that held off two British warships in 1794. Britain then built more than a hundred along its own coast against Napoleon. Fort Denison's is the only one ever built in Australia, and unusually it's joined to a battery and barracks instead of standing on its own. The State Heritage Register calls it one of only two towers in the southern hemisphere that survive intact.
The guns were in by December 1858. The Herald of 13 May 1859 listed an 8-inch shell gun on top of the tower, three 32-pounders and a carronade inside it, nine 32-pounders in the battery and two 10-inch shell guns. A wet ditch, a sea wall and two loopholed rooms followed in 1859. By then the bill had reached £26,962, and the Heritage Register puts the last of the work at about 1862.
The sad joke is that it was out of date almost as soon as it was built. Steam, iron-clad ships and rifled guns were changing everything. In 1860 the Herald reckoned the fort's cannonballs would "rebound like a racquet ball" off an armoured ship, and in 1862 the Empire called it a "mere toy, utterly useless as a fort". An 1867 committee recommended pulling it down, but by then it had found other jobs.
_SLNSW_FL1230991.jpg)
Gunners, Volunteers and the Naval Brigade
Royal Artillery gunners garrisoned the fort from the late 1850s. There were never more than 25 of them, some with their wives and children, and three babies were born on the island between 1858 and 1863. The last British troops left Sydney in August 1870, and the fort passed to the volunteers and to Captain Francis Hixson's Naval Brigade. The last gun practice there was in 1887, and the guns in the battery were all taken away between 1899 and 1900.
There was one more bang. Early on 6 October 1900, during the Boer War, someone rowed out, climbed the tower, ran up a home-made Boer flag and let off one of the old cannons. It was Charles Lightoller, a young officer off the liner Medic, who owned up years later in his memoirs. In 1912 he was the most senior officer to survive the Titanic.
A Light, a Fog Signal and a Tide Gauge
The fort's peacetime jobs turned out to matter far more than its guns. A red oil light went up on the tower in May 1858 and was shown every night from June. By 1866 the colony was also paying for a gong to be sounded in fog. Lightkeepers lived on the island with their families, and keeper Thomas Wren died there in 1885. The Harbour Trust brought in an electric light and a signal bell in 1905. Then, because the undersea cable kept breaking, it installed a stronger acetylene light, and the 8-inch gun was craned off the top of the tower to make room. The new light was working by 1913, and it's still there.
Then there are the tides. National Parks says the fort has been Sydney's official tide measuring point since 1857, and the World Meteorological Organization has given the gauge centennial status. The Conservation Management Plan says a self-registering gauge was set up in February 1866, followed by newer ones in 1872, 1914, 1996 and 2007. In May 1877 it recorded a tsunami from an earthquake in what is now Chile, at three feet six inches. Fort Denison readings are still the base for tide tables across New South Wales.
The One O'Clock Gun – From 1906
Sydney had a time gun from 1858, first at Fort Macquarie and later at Dawes Point. In 1906 it moved to Fort Denison, and the ABC marked the centenary of its first firing there on 9 February 2006. It went off at 1 pm, as the time ball dropped on the Observatory, so ships could check their chronometers and the rest of us could set our watches. It was stopped in February 1942 for wartime security and started again in 1986. The Conservation Management Plan calls it the earliest gun in Australia still doing the same job.
Harbour Trust Years and the Caretakers
The Sydney Harbour Trust took over from 1901 and built a timber wharf, then a slipway in 1917–18. From then on the fort was as much a home as a fort. One caretaker's son, born there in 1921, was named Stanley Denison Briggs. Regular public tours began in January 1936, the same year the new Maritime Services Board took over.
World War II and the USS Chicago Shell
The army moved onto the island during World War II and set it up as an anti-aircraft post, with an officer and about 30 men in the barracks and a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun on a concrete pad in the bastion. The one o'clock gun fell silent in February 1942.
On the night of 31 May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines got into Sydney Harbour. At around 11 pm, the American heavy cruiser USS Chicago caught one of them in its searchlight. A 5-inch gun crew and a machine gun opened fire across the water towards Fort Denison. One of the 5-inch shells hit the Martello tower. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Heritage Register just say the tower was damaged. The Conservation Management Plan, citing James Semple Kerr's 1986 study, says it caused "minor cracking only". Wikipedia adds that the damage can still be seen. So the claim that Fort Denison was hit by "friendly fire" in 1942 is true. It just wasn't the dramatic wreck some retellings make it sound like.
_in_May_1942.jpg)
The army left in April 1943, and the Maritime Services Board cleared away the wartime bits and put the fort back the way it had been in the 1920s.
Tea, Scones and Tours – The Postwar Years
After the war the caretakers ran the place almost like a family business. In the early 1950s Osmond Jarvis phoned the 9 am tide reading through to the Observatory every day and showed visitors around while Mrs Jarvis made scones on the fuel stove. In 1958 The Siege of Pinchgut was filmed there, a story about an escaped convict holding the fort and its caretakers hostage. Cliff and June Morris lived on the fort for 25 years from 1961, with Cliff leading the tours and June serving tea and cakes. Visitor numbers climbed to nearly 23,000 a year by 1985. Norm Dow was the last Maritime Services Board caretaker, from 1986 to 1992.
National Parks, Restoration and the Restaurant
The Conservation Management Plan says the fort was transferred to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1992 and became part of Sydney Harbour National Park in 1995. In the late 1990s the architects Tzannes and Associates turned the old caretaker's quarters into a café and restaurant, while the stone, timber and ironwork were conserved. The work won architecture and heritage awards in 2001. The restaurant lease ran out in 2017. In early 2018 ferry wash on top of very high tides came over the walls, and the Plan warns that rising seas, not enemy ships, are now the real threat to the fort.
In May 2021 the NSW Government announced a lease of up to 25 years to Fort Denison Dining, part of The Point Group, for a restaurant, functions and tours, which was meant to open in late 2022. At the same time National Parks began conservation work on the buildings and sea wall and started replacing the wharf.
Visiting Fort Denison Today
This is the part that might disappoint you. When I checked the National Parks page on 9 October 2026, it said Fort Denison – Muddawahnyuh "remains closed to visitors throughout 2026 to enable the completion of conservation works". The closure alert was last reviewed on 27 August 2026 and says service upgrades and extensive conservation works are ongoing. No reopening date is given. The Point Group's own Fort Denison website still says "Coming Soon". So for now there are no ferries, landings or tours. Before you plan a trip, check the National Parks alerts page or call 1300 072 757.
You can still see it from all round the harbour. Mrs Macquaries Point, the Opera House forecourt and the deck of any Manly or Mosman ferry are the best spots.
Heritage Listings
- National Trust of Australia (NSW) register: 11 February 1974.
- Register of the National Estate (now closed): 21 March 1978, Place ID 1856.
- NSW State Heritage Register: listed 2 April 1999, number 00985, as "Fort Denison; Pinchgut; Mattewanye / Maddawahnyah". The register calls it "of national and international significance as an exceptionally fine and intact example of a nineteenth century defence fortification that is unique within Australia".
- Also a heritage item under the Sydney Harbour planning instrument, and on the National Parks heritage register.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Mat-te-wan-ye, a favourite gathering place of the harbour people.
- February 1788 – A convict is sentenced to a week on the island on bread and water.
- 30 November 1796 – Francis Morgan is executed and hung in chains on the island.
- 1804 – First known printed use of the name Pinchgut.
- 29 November 1839 – Two American warships enter the harbour at night without being seen.
- 1840–1842 – Convicts cut the island down into a battery. Work stops in November 1842.
- 23 August 1855 – £16,500 voted for Denison's fort.
- 24 July 1856 – Barney lays the keystone of the last arch in the tower base.
- 15 October 1857 – Officially named Fort Denison.
- 1858 – Navigation light lit. Guns mounted by December.
- 1866 – Self-registering tide gauge installed.
- 1870 – Last British troops leave Sydney.
- 1899–1900 – Battery guns removed.
- 1906 – One O'Clock Gun moves to Fort Denison.
- 1913 – New light replaces the gun on top of the tower.
- 1936 – Public tours begin. The Maritime Services Board takes over.
- 31 May 1942 – A shell from USS Chicago hits the tower.
- 1986 – One O'Clock Gun fired again.
- 1992 / 1995 – Transferred to National Parks. Added to Sydney Harbour National Park.
- 2 April 1999 – NSW State Heritage Register listing.
- 2017 – Restaurant lease ends.
- 2021 – New lease to The Point Group announced.
- 2026 – Closed to visitors all year for conservation works.
Where the Sources Disagree
- The island's height. The Dictionary of Sydney says 75 feet (almost 23 metres). Wikipedia says "15-metre (49 ft) high or higher".
- The first convict. Collins doesn't name him and gives 11 February 1788 and a week. Gillen (via People Australia) names Thomas Hill and gives 12 February and eight days in irons. The State Heritage Register calls him "Thomas Mitchell".
- Morgan's hanging. Collins says Morgan was executed "at Sydney" and then hung in chains on the island. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was hanged on Pinchgut. The "beautiful harbour" last words only turn up in later retellings.
- The name. Early writers put it down to short rations. The Dictionary of Sydney also mentions a nautical meaning, the narrowest part of a channel.
- The 1839 ships. Reynolds and Wikipedia say two. The Conservation Management Plan says "six ships", and Lighthouses of Australia says "two American sloops and five smaller warships".
- When the levelling started. The Heritage Register, the Plan and the ADB say 1840. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say 1841.
- The designer. The Heritage Register, the Plan and the ADB all credit George Barney, with William Randle as builder. I found nothing to support Gother Kerr Mann having a hand in it.
- Completion. The ADB and the Dictionary of Sydney say 1857. Wikipedia gives 14 November 1857, and the Heritage Register says final work was done about 1862.
- The guns and the light. The Dictionary of Sydney, Wikipedia and the 1859 Herald list all count the guns differently. The Plan says the 1913 light replaced the 8-inch gun, while Wikipedia and Lighthouses of Australia say the 10-inch.
- The cost. The Plan gives £26,962 by the end of 1859. Lighthouses of Australia says more than £50,000.
- The tide records. National Parks says 1857. The Plan says continuous recording from 1866, and the international sea level record starts in 1886.
- The One O'Clock Gun. The Dictionary of Sydney, Wikipedia and the ABC say it moved to Fort Denison in 1906. One summary passage in the Conservation Management Plan says 1905.
- The 1942 shell. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Heritage Register just say the tower was "damaged". The Plan, following Kerr, says it was "minor cracking only".
- National Parks. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Plan say 1992. The Heritage Register and National Parks say 1995, which is when it was added to the national park.
- The restaurant. The Plan has the café conversion finished in 2000. Wikipedia says the restaurant opened in 2006.
My Earlier Posts
- Pinch Gut Island – Fort Denison – Sydney Harbour – Port Jackson (2021)
- Pinchgut Island – Fort Denison – Sydney Cove (2016)
- Garden Island, Pinchgut, and Clarke's Island, Seen from Rose Bay
- The Amazing Islands of Sydney Harbour
- Garden Island – Sydney Harbour
- Goat Island – Sydney Harbour
- Cockatoo Island – Port Jackson
- Clark Island – Sydney Harbour
- Shark Island – Sydney Harbour
- Bare Island – La Perouse – Botany Bay
- Fort Macquarie – Bennelong Point
- Observatory Hill – Fort Phillip – Sydney Observatory
- Farm Cove – Next to the Royal Botanic Gardens
- Taronga Zoo – From Moore Park to Bradleys Head
- Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
- 19th Century Convicts
- Captain Arthur Phillip & The First Fleet Arriving at Botany Bay – January 1788
- Sydney Harbour Panorama Magazine
- Sydney Harbour from Watsons Bay
Sources
- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Fort Denison Conservation Management Plan, 2019 – environment.nsw.gov.au (PDF). The main source for the convict, construction, garrison, light, tide, caretaker and National Parks years, and for the period newspaper quotes marked "as quoted in the Conservation Management Plan".
- Heritage NSW, State Heritage Register, "Fort Denison", SHR 00985 – State Heritage Inventory
- Laila Ellmoos, "Fort Denison", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – dictionaryofsydney.org
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Morgan, Francis" – dictionaryofsydney.org, and "Hill, Thomas" – dictionaryofsydney.org
- NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, "Fort Denison – Muddawahnyuh" – nationalparks.nsw.gov.au (checked 9 October 2026)
- NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, "Fort Denison – Muddawahnyuh – Local alerts" – nationalparks.nsw.gov.au (checked 9 October 2026; alert last reviewed 27 August 2026)
- David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 (1798) and Vol. 2 (1802) – Project Gutenberg Vol. 1, Project Gutenberg Vol. 2
- "Thomas Hill (c.1758–?)", People Australia, Australian National University, from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia (1989) – peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au
- "Convict Francis Morgan", Convict Records – convictrecords.com.au
- "Barney, George (1792–1862)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
- Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842 (2003), chapter "Commodore of the Pacific", quoting William Reynolds's journal – online text
- Geoffrey Ingleton, etching "Pinchgut, 30th Nov. 1839 – Wilkes' ships Vincennes and Peacock at Anchor" (c.1939) – Antique Print Map Room
- Lighthouses of Australia Inc., "Fort Denison Lighthouse" – lighthouses.org.au
- ABC News, "Harbour gun tradition turns 100", 9 February 2006 – abc.net.au
- Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, station "Sydney, Fort Denison" – psmsl.org, and "Sydney, Fort Denison 2" – psmsl.org
- Wikipedia, "Fort Denison" – en.wikipedia.org (incorporates State Heritage Register text under CC BY 4.0)
- The Point Group, "Fort Denison re-imagined by The Point Group", media release, 20 May 2021 – fortdenison.com.au (checked 9 October 2026)
- Kirsty Sier, "The Point Group to transform Fort Denison", Hospitality Magazine, 1 June 2021 – hospitalitymagazine.com.au
- "Plans to revitalise Fort Denison revealed", Sydney Times, 2021 – sydneytimes.net.au
- Period newspapers, as quoted in the Conservation Management Plan: Sydney Gazette 30 December 1804 and 13 September 1831; The Australian 26 October 1827 and 31 December 1840; Sydney Herald 15 December 1840; Free Press and Commercial Journal 13 February 1841; Sydney Morning Herald 14 May 1847, 5 May 1854, 9 April 1857, 17 September 1857, 13 May 1859 and 30 November 1860; Sydney Chronicle 11 August 1847; Armidale Express 2 May 1857; Empire 7 March 1855 and 22 May 1862; Maitland Mercury 25 August 1866; NSW Government Gazette 16 October 1857. All can be found on Trove.
- Joseph Holt, Memoirs of Joseph Holt, General of the Irish Rebels, Vol. II (1838), and David Dickenson Mann, The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811), both as quoted in the Conservation Management Plan
- James Semple Kerr, Fort Denison: An Investigation for the Maritime Services Board of NSW (1986), as cited in the Conservation Management Plan and State Heritage Register
- Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with the original holders (State Library of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, CSIRO and others) credited under each picture