North Head is a headland south-east of the suburb of Manly. It is part of Sydney Harbour National Park. The headland is a promontory of sandstone and is 3.85 square kilometres in area. The Sydney Quarantine station is located on North Head and is one of the few facilities still in existence which once operated in each state of Australia until the 1980s. From 1828 Spring Cove, on the western side of North Head, was used to quarantine new arrivals to Sydney to minimise the spread of communicable diseases such as smallpox and whooping cough. In 1832, the whole area of North Head was set aside for a quarantine station. A permanent quarantine facility was set up in 1837 and continued to operate until 1984. Vietnamese refugees were housed there in 1975 and Cyclone Tracy victims from Darwin, Northern Territory in 1975-6. The Station was finally closed in 1984 and the 'management' of the site passed to the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA License. It uses material from Wikipedia content.