The Gunnery, Woolloomooloo, Heritage arts building in Woolloomooloo, Australia.
The Gunnery is a heritage-listed building at 43–51 Cowper Wharf Roadway in Woolloomooloo, built around 1900 as a bulk store for the Sydney Morning Herald. It reopened in 2023 as a contemporary art space run by Artspace after renovations by the Sydney firm DunnHillam Architecture + Urban Design. The property is owned by Housing NSW.
The Gunnery was built around 1900 as a bulk store for the Sydney Morning Herald. During World War II the Commonwealth Government acquired it for defence, and the Royal Australian Navy ran a gunnery instructional centre there, training Australian and Allied merchant seamen. The site was commissioned as HMAS Mindari on 1 July 1945 and decommissioned on 30 April 1948. It was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
The building's name comes from its wartime role: Royal Australian Navy trainees practised gunnery here, and the site was commissioned as HMAS Mindari on 1 July 1945. After decommissioning in 1948 it served as a naval film laboratory and cinema before becoming the Gunnery Art Gallery under the Ministry for the Arts. Since 2023 it has operated as a contemporary art space run by Artspace.
The Gunnery stands at 43–51 Cowper Wharf Roadway in Woolloomooloo, a short walk from the Finger Wharf and the harbour foreshore. The heritage-listed building is owned by Housing NSW and managed as a contemporary art space by Artspace, so check opening times before visiting.
The gunnery dome was a cinema ceiling on which a plane was projected; trainees fired Oerlikon and Bofors guns at it while recorded gun and aircraft sounds tried to distract their aim.
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