Soon after Federation the Commonwealth Government initiated a major building and infrastructure program which also remains largely intact today.

This program included similar, but smaller, quarantine stations around Australian ports, of which North Head is the only remaining example.

As such, the quarantine complex represents one of the most complete collection of buildings, equipment and a setting showing how life was lived among the struggles and successes in public health of Australia's past.

Many of the inscriptions on the local sandstone outcrops record the names and reasons why previous colonial and latter occupants found themselves in such a place.

[1] The station was finally closed in 1984 and the management of the site passed to the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service.

[4] The nearby Inner North Head clifftops have many inscriptions from the quarantine period as well as the remnants of 1940s coastal defenses in the form of two gun sites, a range-sighting post, four ammunition storage bunkers and a fortified outhouse.

South Head is a headland, part of Sydney Harbour National Park, to the north of the suburb of Watsons Bay.

It then loops around the headland, passing Hornby Lighthouse, its lightkeepers' cottages, and several gun emplacements from the end of the 19th century.

The fortifications feature "Tiger Cages", where the military trained soldiers by simulating prisoner of war conditions in Vietnam.