Wanganui's coastal World War II defences deserve more attention, Castlecliff residents Lynne Douglas and Roger Shand say.
Dr Shand, a coastal scientist, has seen many of them as he surveys the coastline. He knows where others are now submerged by sand or out at sea, as the shoreline changes.
Mrs Douglas remembers playing in "the forts" as a Castlecliff child.
From a patchwork of records, including a paper by Darcy Waters, it appears there are at least 17 structures between the Kaitoke Stream at South Beach and Longbeach Drive. They were built from 1942-4, when a Japanese invasion was feared. Wanganui was a secondary port then and had a home guard.
The biggest and most undamaged structures are on Landguard Bluff, including an artillery battery, Landguard Battery 114, which once housed a 5-inch (12.7cm) Mk 7 naval gun that could shoot 10 miles (16km). To the rear is an observation post, and there may once have been tunnels between them.
The gun was never fired at an enemy, but Dr Shand's father-in-law heard it tested and said the boom shook the city. The two grim old concrete structures are now in a horse paddock, covered in graffiti and littered with broken glass.
That contrasted with the way Australia treated its military history, Dr Shand said. He has visited a Queensland city that holds an Anzac memorial service each year at the site of a mere stump - because it is a remnant of a structure. Wanganui's gun emplacements were part of local history and needed recognition, he said: "People who know the stories are disappearing."
Mrs Douglas agreed. She took the matter to the Returned Services Association once, to no effect.
As well as the battery on the bluff, there are two other types of structure - "arrowhead" gun emplacements and a few round pillboxes. The Short St pilot station is built on top of one gun emplacement, and Mrs Douglas said another building disguised a gun emplacement in Rangiora St.
At least one other was demolished at Lundon Park, according to Laraine Sole's book Castlecliff: The Community on the Coast.