Both during and after the war the adjacent barracks complex grew up over the large site where the battery's garrison buildings were located and where regular training and annual encampments of northern military forces had been conducted since 1889, most particularly those of the Kennedy Regiment formed in Townsville in 1886.

The entire former military site, encompassing the barracks and the fortification, is delimited by Cook, Isley, Mitchell and Howitt Streets to the west and south, and enclosed by a semi-circle of sea cliffs and littoral land to the north and east; however the heritage boundary encompasses only those parts of Queensland heritage significance, namely the fortification structures and earthworks, five P1 huts put in place during World War II, and the parade ground at the site's formal entrance.

These defences were the standard means of defending ports and harbours following Britain's rise as a naval power, relieving the navy of its defensive functions and affording it greater scope for offensive attacks.

[1] Cleveland Bay and its nascent settlement were first declared a port of entry in September 1865, having been privately surveyed the previous year by agents of John Melton Black - the general manager of Robert Towns & Co, one of the largest pastoral interests in the Kennedy District.

Another war "scare" erupted in 1878 when Russian forces advanced on the capital of Turkey, a British ally, and again galvanised colonial governments in Australia regarding their strategic forward defence.

By June, when Queensland Premier Sir Samuel Walker Griffith toured the north and visited Townsville, the 64-pounder guns recommended by Scratchley in 1882 had been mounted at Kissing Point and Magazine Island and were fired.

In preparation for these events the salt pan land adjacent to the south of the Kissing Point outcrop and subject to intermittent tidal flooding was drained with a dam and sluice valve.

Similar earthwork, including a dam across a creek that flowed into Rowes Bay, was carried out to make the salt pan and mangrove areas along the western half of Norman Park into a suitable training and parade field.

Despite the ongoing debate the colonial government finally agreed to commit to building defences at Kissing Point and Magazine Island that would operate in concert to protect all approaches to the busy harbour.

[1] Major Edward Druitt, who trained at the Royal Engineers submarine miners depot at Gosport near Portsmouth in England, was appointed to design and supervise the works at Townsville, arriving there in early 1890 and soon after preparing a plan for the Kissing Point battery.

[1] In 1900 yet another comprehensive report on the state of the colony's defence was prepared and the fortification at Kissing Point was discussed in terms of its purpose in repelling attack from the north and the proposed use of the open ground behind the battery for a depot with seven days of reserves.

A final blow was struck when Field Marshall Lord Kitchener completed his defence survey in 1909, and disparagingly remarked that the "nice little fort" at Kissing Point was constituted of a prettily situated barracks and a few out-of-date guns.

This event and the 1890 maritime strike were both seminal influences on the terms of the Commonwealth Defence Act 1903, which explicitly prevented the raising of a regular infantry and prohibited the citizen army from being used in industrial disputes.

From this time until the commencement of World War II it, along with other members of the Northern defence forces, used the area around the Kissing Point fortification for training, drills and annual encampments.

[1] By 1943 the immediate threat of Japanese seaborne attack had passed and the war had begun to move north, so the need for a coastal anti-aircraft defence battery at Kissing Point was eliminated.

In 1957 the original Kissing Point defence reserve was subdivided and a lot on its eastern end was transferred to the Townsville City Council where they built a rock-enclosed, ocean bathing pool.

[1] In 1997 Jezzine Barracks, including the outcrop where the Kissing Point fortifications stand, was identified by the Australian Government as a potentially disposable land holding, a decision that instigated a round of studies and community consultation to establish what this would entail and how the site's heritage values would be retained.

The public, through community activism illustrated in numerous newspaper articles, formation of a lobbying alliance and representations to local members of both Queensland and Australian parliaments, demonstrated its strong concern regarding these issues.

[1] The military site at North Ward in Townsville - as bounded by Cook, Isley, Mitchell and Howitt Streets and the threshold of littoral land and cliffs facing the ocean - consists of two main precincts: the Kissing Point fortification and Jezzine Barracks.

These views and the wider landscape of which they form a part are highly valued by the community and are bound up in the siting of the fortification for coastal defence purposes and the sense of security it has afforded Townsville since 1891.

[1] Sited on the easternmost of two rocky outcrops that occupy the headland separating Rowes Bay and Cleveland Bay about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) north of Townsville city centre, the Kissing Point fortification comprises: two gun emplacements, an underground magazine and a casemate store, one machine gun position, a lookout and two Depression range finder (DRF) positions organised along a broad sunken pathway formed by an embanked parapet on one side and a long, low sandstone block retaining wall on the other, which opens out to form a small manning parade ground.

[1] This brick and concrete structure comprises a series of rooms, corridors and trenches largely recessed into the earth that were used for the safe storage of ammunition and its protected delivery to the gun emplacements on either side.

The first, to the south-west of the fortification outcrop, was characterised by a range of small single-storey, steel- framed sheds and timber-framed and -clad huts with either gabled or skillion roofs of corrugated steel arranged around a series of secondary roadways and open drainage lines.

The five P1 huts associated with the Barracks, installed in their current location during World War II in the south-western quadrant of 5/SP211556, are important and increasingly rare icons of Australia's participation in this conflict, the outbreak of which precipitated an unparalleled and urgent defence build up on home soil that relied heavily on prefabricated structures.

As it belongs to a colonial system of defence that stretches along the entire east coast of Australia, the Kissing Point fortifications would benefit from and add detail to the body of evidence gleaned from these other locations.

Also remaining uncompromised is the relationship between these elements enclosed within an embanked, seaward parapet and a landward retaining wall, and the panoramic views of the wider littoral and marine landscape, which was an essential component of its defensive purpose.

[1] The Kissing Point fortification is an important example of the work of the designer and construction supervisor, Major Edward Druitt RE, who made a significant contribution to the defence of Queensland in the late nineteenth century as a military engineer engaged on this installation, and others on Magazine and Thursday Islands.

Kissing Point belongs to a coastal landscape of granite outcrops, headlands and hills around Townsville, which forms a dramatic backdrop to the Great Barrier Reef Natural World Heritage Area, a vast territory of spectacular scenery esteemed internationally for its unique biological, zoological and geological qualities.

The wide-ranging views the fortification affords north-west to Cape Pallarenda, west to Magnetic Island and south-east over Cleveland Bay and the harbour to Mount Elliot, have been valued by generations of visitors to the site.

Kissing Point fortification and Jezzine Barracks have strong associations for both the military and civilian communities of Townsville as a source of security and pride, evident since the earliest annual encampments held at the site in the late 1880s.