As well as showing visitors the albatrosses, centre staff take parties around some of the fortifications that exist nearby. Maori long ago recognised the strategic impor­tance of the headland, and built the most substantial forti­fied pa in the southern South Island here. More recently, Europeans erected their own extensive fortifications. The threat of an Anglo-Russian war in the 1880s was the spur to this defence work. This was the Age of Empires, and global manoeuvring was intense. A Russian foray into Afghanistan in 1885 was perceived as a threat to the Brit­ish Empire everywhere.The first birds were seen in the area in the 1870s, but the first chick was not fledged until 1938.