The Jack's Magazine, also known as the Saltwater River Gunpowder Magazine, is a gunpowder magazine located on the western banks of the Maribyrnong River, off La Scala Avenue, in Maribyrnong, an inner-western suburb of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia. Built in 1878 to provide safe storage for bonded gunpowder and explosives imported into the Colony of Victoria, the structure was decommissioned in 1993. Managed by Working Heritage, the site has been open to the public since 2026.
Formally known as the Saltwater River Gunpowder Magazine, the facility became popularly known as Jack’s Magazine in recognition of Wally Jack who served as depot foreman and keeper of the magazine from World War I until 1943.
Description
Jack's Magazine is a virtually intact complex of 19th century, twin bluestone-vaulted and gunpowder storage buildings, that are concealed behind high earth mound blast walls, and a tall bluestone wall, with a canal connecting it to the river. The six-hectare (fifteen-acre) site also contains tunnels, tramways, service buildings, and a loading dock. The twin 64-metre-long (210ft) and 11-metre-wide (35ft) tunnels were approved in 1875, designed by government architect, William Wardell, as Inspector General of the Public Works Department, and built by contractor George Cornwell between 1876 and 1878, commissioned by the Victorian colonial government.
Jack's Magazine was decommissioned from 1993 and it was proposed that the site be redeveloped for a commercial use. Following several calls for expressions of interests it was decided that public ownership was the only practical management for the historic site. Jack's Magazine was transferred from the Commonwealth to the Victorian government in c.2004. It has been managed by Working Heritage – a committee appointed by the Victorian Government to manage heritage properties on Crown land, and after ten years of remediation and short-term/temporary open days, it opened as a tourist site in 2026.
In an interview aired in 2020 on the SBS TV series Secrets of Our Cities, Peter Haffenden, a local resident, asserted that, from Jack's Magazine, "all the bullets, all the .303s bullets used in Gallipoli, in Egypt, in the Somme, in Amiens" were all made by the munition company, whose main factory was based at Jack's Magazine.
