by Scott Bevan
Just off the point, thousands of vehicles are rumbling along the bottom of the harbour. They’re travelling in Sydney Harbour Tunnel, through concrete tubes that at their deepest are 25 metres below sea level. The tunnel wears a helmet of rocks to protect it from anything coming from above, such as an anchor or a sinking ship. The project was undertaken to alleviate some of the pressure from an increasingly clogged Harbour Bridge. The idea of a tunnel under the harbour had been around for more than a century. In 1887, the Government noted it was seriously considering a proposal for twin passageways, one for trams and trains, the second for other vehicles. The project would have reshaped more than timetables. It was proposed the excavated material could have been used ‘in filling up some of the bays on the northern side of the harbour in which the water stagnates and engenders disease’. Newspaper reports in 1887 estimated the project would have cost £450,000, and there was ‘every reason to hope’ work would begin that year. Construction began on the Sydney Harbour Tunnel in 1988, and the project cost close to $750 million. It opened in August 1992.
There is a proposal for another, ‘Western Harbour’, tunnel for vehicles. And preparations for a rail tunnel under the harbour have begun. Barges have been working to the west of the Bridge, drilling into the harbour bed, seeking to identify the best route. At the risk of sounding like those optimists in 1887, the Government expects trains will be travelling through that tunnel by 2024.
While Sydney Harbour Tunnel carries about 90,000 vehicles for 2.3 kilometres from one shore to the other every day, it happens deep under the water. It is out of sight of Sydneysiders, until there is a crash or a major jam in the tunnel; then everyone curses it. And that is why in this city, where a quiet achiever receives, at best, scant praise, the tunnel can never be the Bridge. Cool efficiency somewhere in the mud on the harbour bed is no match for a stunning ballet of steel vaulting through the sky above the water.
7
KIRRIBILLI TO MIDDLE HEAD
AROUND THE harbour, there are richer suburbs than Kirribilli, but none is home to more powerful residents. Kirribilli Point holds the Sydney homes of the Governor-General of Australia and the nation’s Prime Minister.
Long before it was the residence of the Governor-General, Admiralty House was the home of the powerful, often the rich and powerful, of the colony. The land on which the mansion was built was bought in 1806 by the merchant and builder of the colony’s first commercial wharf, Robert Campbell. The house, or the beginning of what it would grow into, was built in 1845 by the Collector of Customs, Lieutenant Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes. He called his single-storey stone home Wotonga. Among the influential characters who later moved into Wotonga were a politician, Thomas Cadell, MLC, a successful auctioneer George Lloyd, and, before them, Lieutenant Colonel George Barney, the Royal Engineer who reshaped parts of the harbour with his construction of Fort Denison on the island to the south-east of Kirribilli Point, and Semi-Circular Quay in Sydney Cove. With each owner came some changes to Wotonga.
In 1855, with the Crimean War blazing on the other side of the globe, Governor Sir William Denison was concerned Russian ships might sail through the Heads. So he resumed a portion of Kirribilli Point and had gun emplacements built into the sandstone. Ironically, a few decades earlier, the headland was briefly known as Russian Point, when the crews of Russian ships on a science mission were allowed to camp there. Russian ships never did invade Sydney Harbour, but a succession of British admirals set up a luxurious beachhead on Kirribilli Point.
In 1885, the property’s name was changed to Admiralty House. It was the residence of the Admiral of the Royal Navy’s Australian Squadron. To give these gentlemen a greater chance to survey all they ruled over, a second storey was added to the home, and it was girdled in the grand colonnaded veranda, which it still wears. In 1913, the final officer to live in Admiralty House suggested he was handing the property to the Commonwealth. That came as a surprise to the Government of New South Wales, which countered it had loaned the house to the British.
Nevertheless, Admiralty House became the Governor-General’s Sydney residence in 1913. During the Great Depression, Admiralty House was closed as a belt-tightening gesture, but within a few years, the Governors-General were back in the home and, by 1948, the property’s title was in the hands of the Commonwealth.
Admiralty House is at the end of a narrow street filled with apartment blocks, some gracious in their Art Deco finery, others more modern and ostentatious, and all facing the harbour, or craning for a glimpse of the water. Yet the minute you’re allowed through the gates and are heading down the drive to Admiralty House, with its sandstone skin glowing in the sun and light flushing through the building’s grand windows, you feel gloriously isolated.
The harbourfront lawn is shaded by a giant fig tree. Dotted around the property, and along the front and filtering the views, are native flora, including angophoras and a towering Gymea lily. While the setting may have been inspired by the English, the Australian vegetation can’t be denied or pushed out of the harbour picture.
Huddling just below the edge of the lawn and at the foot of a small escarpment are some reminders of when the tip of the point was resumed for defence. The historic marines’ barracks is only metres from the water. As I discovered while working during the 2014–2015 New Year’s Eve celebrations, it is a great position to not just watch the fireworks, but to be part of the fun. For an outpost of vice-regal pomp and circumstance, Admiralty House feels as though it is in the midst of the public celebrations during big events, especially as the showboats thump past close to shore.
A spectacle has always drawn the crowds to the harbour’s edge, but sometimes not for a celebration. On 14 December 1921, thousands watched the wool store of the Pastoral Finance Association on the Kirribilli shoreline burn. The seven-storey warehouse was known around the harbour, because it was crowned with a large advertising sign. When a fire broke out in the building around dawn, the combination of about 30,000 wool bales and the lanolin-soaked floors created what the press called a furnace. At one stage, there were concerns the flames might jump onto Admiralty House. Millions of litres of water were pumped from the harbour, but the wool store burnt to the ground.
Sharing Kirribilli Point with Admiralty House is an east-facing gabled home that is the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence. Kirribilli House was built in 1854 by merchant Adolphus Feeze, who had paid for a slice of Wotonga’s land. About 1920, when Prime Minister William Hughes heard the land was slated to be subdivided, he had the Commonwealth buy Kirribilli House. In what monarchists might discern as a marvellous symbol, Kirribilli House was used for a while by staff of the Governor-General.
From 1956, Kirribilli House was used as accommodation for visiting guests, and as a Sydney residence for prime ministers. The house’s name has worked its way into the lexicon, with the term ‘Kirribilli Agreement’. ‘Kirribilli’ is believed to be derived from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a good fishing spot’. In political speak, ‘Kirribilli Agreement’ means ‘a good spot to do a leadership deal’. In 1988, then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke met his Treasurer and deputy, Paul Keating, in Kirribilli House and agreed to resign during his next term of office, if the Labor Party won again, and hand the reins to Keating. But the deal all came unstuck. Australians were bequeathed not just a political mess but also a new term.
THE ENTRANCE to Careening Cove, as you would expect from the name, is clogged with boats. But they are not laid up on their sides having their hulls scrubbed, as they used to be in the earliest days of the colony. Instead, these days, some fabulously expensive boats are moored around the cove’s mouth and at the marina of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron.
The private yacht club has been in existence for more than a century and a half. Among the club’s drivers were members of the Milson family, who were keen to formalise their passion for sailing. James Milson had been competing on the harbour since the first regatta was held in the 1820s, and his son, James junior, was ap
pointed the club’s first Vice-Commodore in 1862. Young Milson had already created his mark along the shoreline, establishing an abattoir, which led to the cove bearing the pungent name Slaughterhouse Bay for a time.
I paddle around the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron’s marina into Careening Cove. I’m headed for a smaller clubhouse, where history is launched and skitters across the water each Saturday from October to April. It is the Sydney Flying Squadron, the home of the famous 18-foot skiffs. These are the craft that the bigger club along the bay reputedly rejected from an Anniversary Day race, prompting businessman and sailor Mark Foy to set up his own competitions for smaller open boats.
The races for small craft, especially the 18-footers with their sails that open and bloom like butterflies’ wings, soon became spectator favourites on the harbour. And more than a century on, they still are favourites.
The skiffs are rigged on the grounds of Milson Park, which was formed from fill and rubbish at the head of the cove. They may be less than 6 metres long when they are rolled out of the clubhouse on the edge of the park, but the skiffs grow in dimensions and attractiveness. As the hulls lie on the grass beside the water, their varnished wooden bodies sheeny like a sunbather’s, the skiffs are fussed over by crews. The sailors mount and rig bowsprits and masts, gaffs and booms, sails and bundles of ‘kites’, or spinnakers. The skiffs become stunning, and passers-by stop and stare at the craft and listen to the arcane language and terms the crews speak. But no skiff is more beautiful than Britannia. I may be biased, for I’ve been invited to sail on Britannia by her skipper and creator, Ian Smith.
Compact in stature, Ian Smith is a giant of the wooden boatbuilding tradition in Australia. Ian grew up near the beach in the industrial city of Wollongong. His love of the water led to him building boats from plans out of magazines when he was a teenager. That hobby grew into a living, and he trained others how to build traditional wooden boats. Ian’s skills dovetailed with his interest in history, and he researched what used to be sailed on Sydney Harbour. He resolved to build an 18-foot skiff, and, for his inspiration, he traced a line to the past.
Ian’s skiff is a replica of, and homage to, the original Britannia. It was built in 1919 by George Robinson, who was a star of the Balmain Tigers rugby league team. ‘Wee Georgie’ Robinson and his team would play footy in the winter and, being Balmain boys living by the harbour, would go sailing in summer.
‘Everyone had a boat or knew someone with a boat, so they’d go out,’ Ian explains.
‘If you were a fit young man, that’s what you did, that’s what your mates did, that’s what your family did.’ There were at least five Robinsons on Georgie’s crew.
Nicknames in Australia tend to be ironic, but ‘Wee Georgie’ was just that; he was only about 1.5 metres tall. Wee Georgie was a local hero in his working-class suburb, and he was a champion on the water. He sailed Britannia for more than a quarter of a century, and he won at least thirty championships.
When he decided to base his skiff on Wee Georgie’s Britannia, Ian wanted to copy it as closely as he could. The original is housed at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. To Ian’s good fortune, Britannia had been taken out of display for restoration, so he was able to take lots of photos and pore over it, studying the details from the smallest fittings to measuring the plank widths.
Ian spent 1100 hours crafting his Britannia from Oregon and cedar, kauri and spotted gum, copper and bronze, and a deep respect for tradition. On the bench near the transom, Ian attached a plaque that reads: ‘Britannia. Dedicated to “Wee Georgie” Robinson. Builder and skipper of the original boat 1919. Replica by Ian Smith – 2002.’
‘I think he’d be pleased to know,’ Ian replies, when asked what he reckons Wee Georgie would make of this.
‘We use modern sail cloth and ropes. Everything in the hull is the same as the original. If you plonked Wee Georgie down in it, he’d go, “Something’s different, but I can’t put my finger on it!”.’
Ian considers his skiff an ‘old friend’. But he also has plenty of flesh-and-blood friends. On racing day, friends become crew. Many have raced with him for years. But Ian also accepts newcomers and no-hopers, which are my two qualifications to be on board.
Rigging Britannia is a labour-intensive job that takes the best part of two hours. What’s more, just about everything on this boat is heavier than what is on our competitors’. Crew member Wally says Britannia weighs about 400 kilograms before being rigged, about double that of the others. Once the rigging begins, the weight really piles on. The Oregon mast takes at least four of us to carry and another few to lift it into place. Wally says other skiffs tend to use lighter-weight masts, sometimes made of aluminium. But Ian counters the extra weight is worth it, to honour the boat’s heritage.
‘If we’re going to find out how it [the boat] was used and to pay respect to the blokes who built and raced this, I thought I must do it this way. Do it right,’ says Ian. The mainsail unfurls, revealing the red British Merchant Marine flag emblazoned on it. As I look at the symbol, Ian explains he’s a republican.
‘I feel it’s part of history the way the boats were built,’ he muses. ‘The racing is important, the history of the people is important, but the history of the boats as artefacts is also important and hasn’t received enough attention.’
Just before the race, Ian hands out jumpers to his seven crew members. They’re footy jerseys in the original Balmain colours of black and gold stripes, with the flag and ‘Historical 18-footer Britannia’ embroidered on them. We look like a swarm of bees in our jerseys, and Britannia is a hive, as we nudge her down the ramp and into the harbour.
We pile into the skiff and head out of the cove for the start of the race. Once we’re crushed in, the 18-footer feels like an 18-incher. Thankfully, just before entering the water, I had asked Michele, one of Ian’s long-term crew, is there anything in particular I should remember out on the harbour.
‘Yes. You’re going to get yelled at, and sworn at. But it’s nothing personal.’
On land, Ian is a considered and erudite conversationalist, and a generous and lovely bloke. On the water, he’s a fantastic leader, which means he can be as hard as the wood that he works with. When the skipper talks through his neatly trimmed beard, we listen and react. Even a novice is left in no doubt what the skipper wants, and where we have to move to. And we have to move quickly, constantly, and as one. It’s shin-knocking, hand-stinging, back-aching work, as we lean out, jump in, duck and weave, pull out the spinnaker poles and attach the sections, then pull them back in. While it’s the skipper giving the instructions, Mother Nature is determining what we’re ordered to do. Joe, a large man from Nebraska (‘cow country’) who has learnt to read the air and sea and spends his days working in a boatyard, looks intently ahead.
‘There’ll be a blow in five, four, three . . .’
The sail blossoms and Britannia tilts. And so we all shift yet again, as the boom swings above us. No wonder the footy players enjoyed this sailing. The tacking is like scrummaging, pushing and shoving each other to get on the gunwale. There is nothing pretentious about this sailing; it’s bloody hard work. It dunks under the water any stereotype of sailing being elitist.
Ian later says it’s an exaggeration that historically the crews were only working class. He mentions a string of professionals who were 18-foot skiff sailors, including a Solicitor-General.
‘If you were one of the core crew, you had some kudos,’ explains Ian. ‘I think their seamanship was respected, but I think there would have been “right of way” clashes.’
Those clashes continue to bounce across the water. At one point, a large charter catamaran tries to barge through.
‘FUCK OFF!’ hollers Ian. The charter skipper tries to argue, wrongly and in vain, that he’s got right of way. He’s told, in no uncertain manner, he’s wrong. ‘Dickhead!’ mutters Matt, a calm-natured crew member, at the end of the cross-water debate. The calmness comes through famil
ial experience for Matt; his grandfather was a champion sailor and sailmaker, and his father was a shipwright, whose business was in a shed opposite the Sydney Flying Squadron clubhouse in Careening Cove. ‘That’s what I love about Australians!’ chuckles Mike, a young Irishman who has volunteered to be crew on this most English-sounding of skiffs. ‘You know exactly where you stand!’
Sydney Harbour holds many beautiful sights, but there can be none more breath-stealing than sitting in the hull of a skiff, when the wind puffs out the ‘kites’. It is as though an old sepia photo of skiffs on the harbour has been breathed to life – in glorious colour. To celebrate and honour Wee Georgie Robinson, Britannia’s spinnaker features the logo of the Balmain Tigers rugby league team.
There is no ‘rule Britannia’ on this day. We come last, clocking in at 1.52.07, more than half an hour behind the winners, and just ahead of the storm that comes skulking in from the west to pummel the harbour. Just before we push Britannia out of the water, Ian takes out a flask filled with rum. We each take a swig. It’s a ritual he practises at the end of each sail. Ian explains that Wee Georgie instituted this tradition on the original Britannia.
‘He called it the “Block and Tackle”. One drink and you’ll do your block, two drinks and you’ll tackle anyone!’
The rum tastes as warm as the camaraderie on the skiff. Despite my being little more than human ballast, Ian invites me back as crew. The next time we taste not just salt spray but victory. Britannia wins, even though we have to round a bulk carrier, and at one point it looks as though a kayaker is playing chicken with us.
