Point Nepean Quarantine Station/Norris Barracks - A Short History

The site now managed by the Point Nepean Community Trust on behalf of the Commonwealth Government resonates with a haunting sense of isolation, mystery and tranquillity that belies its significant many-layered past.

Witness to waves of discovery, settlement, migration and the threats of war and disease, it has at times played host to hundreds of people and assumed the vitality of a small village. Today these imaginings of the past are inspired by breathtaking natural surroundings and heritage buildings in a setting far removed from the bustle of everyday life.

The Boonwurrung people, traditional owners of this and neighbouring lands around Port Phillip Bay, were the first to walk the coastal stretch of Point Nepean that curves to form one arm of The Heads.

European settlement dates from 1837 and a shepherd’s hut built in 1845 and believed to be one of Victoria’s earliest remaining buildings, is a reminder of those times.

By the early 1850s, gold was discovered and shiploads of migrants began pouring through The Heads soon revealing the colony’s inadequate quarantine arrangements. These were forcibly addressed in November 1852 with the arrival of the clipper Ticonderoga, a third of whose crew and passengers were either dead from typhus or infected with it.

A temporary hospital was built at Point Nepean and the Quarantine Station officially gazetted in 1854. Buildings including five two-storey limestone hospital blocks were built during the 1850s with more amenities added over the next 100 years. In 1912, a record 1295 passengers from one ship were quarantined there. During the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic some 128,000 travellers were examined, mostly soldiers returning from World War 1. There was a flurry of activity once more associated with post World War 2 immigration, but between 1952 and 1967 only 12 people were quarantined and the station officially closed in 1980.

With a Defence Department presence well entrenched at the heads, an Officer Cadet School opened on the Quarantine Station site in 1952 and operated until 1987 when the School of Army Health relocated to Portsea from Healesville and renamed the area Norris Barracks.
In 1998, the Army left and, but for about nine months in 1999 when Kosovar refugees occupied the site the Quarantine Station has been vacant and in basic caretaker mode.