by Scott Bevan
THE AUTHOR and Sydney lover Ruth Park once observed that Blackwattle Bay and Rozelle Bay were places where old boats came to die. But these days, just along from the RMS depot, is where old boats are resuscitated and reborn.
Sydney Heritage Fleet has its docks and workshop on the shore. It was here that a team of volunteers restored the tall ship James Craig to be the majestic vessel she is once more. The shipyard reverberates with the soundtrack of vitality; clanging and banging and busy voices. It is the sound of a harbour working. The centre of attention is the coastal steamer John Oxley, which was built in 1927 and served as a pilot boat and lighthouse tender off Queensland for many years. She was one of many coastal steamships that traced the east coast. Near the end of her working life, John Oxley was considered a rust bucket, but as I stand under her bow, looking up at the immensity of her in the slave dock, I can see the years are being scraped off her steel skin. From this angle, she looks awesome, as though she can’t wait to slide back into the water. Yet she has been on the dock for the best part of twenty years. As the 450 volunteers know all too well, to do time-honoured work takes time. But the rewards of patience are berthed in front of the yard, including the fleet’s flagship, the graceful 1902 steam launch, Lady Hopetoun. The fleet has nine historic vessels, from tugs to a gentlemen’s schooner – and James Craig.
While looking at the century-old harbour ferry Kanangra, which still has salt water rubbing her belly while she is being restored, I meet up with Tim Drinkwater, Sydney Heritage Fleet’s Operations Manager.
While Tim is talking, I keep gazing at the steam tug Waratah, which is beside Kanangra. ‘Come on,’ says Tim, following my stare. ‘Let’s go see her.’
Waratah was born on Sydney Harbour, at Cockatoo Island in 1902. At the end of her working life in the late 1960s, she was to be scrapped, until Sydney Heritage Fleet saved her. She is the oldest tug in working order in Australia. What’s more, Waratah is a living, steam-breathing reminder of what the harbour has lost. As Sydney’s role as a working harbour drifts away, so too have the tugs. In old photos of the harbour, tugs are a constant presence, exhaling coal-black breaths as they stoically push and pull ships in and out of wharves.
‘Without them, a port would be a chaotic place to berth a ship,’ Tim says.
Tugboats have been crucial in developing Sydney Harbour as a port. In 1831, the first steam-powered vessels appeared on the harbour, and, among their various roles, they were tugs. Before then, ships were moved at the variable mercy of Mother Nature, or slowly pulled by oarsmen, as Randi Svensen points out in her book on tugs, Heroic, Forceful and Fearless. Once there were tugboats, Randi explains, ships no longer had to wait for fair winds and currents to go in and out of port.
With fewer ships berthing in the harbour, you don’t see many tugs. It is only when I’m at Sydney Heritage Fleet’s yard that I realise how rarely I see them on the harbour. Not that they’ve ever demanded attention. Tugs are not very Sydney. They are not flashy, and they are not something you notice; they just get on with the job, usually while in the service of something much bigger and more eye-catching, such as a cruise ship.
What we once barely noticed we now keenly feel. It is as though there is a hole in the soul of Sydney Harbour with so few of these little workboats going about their business. Yet here in Rozelle Bay, that soul is restored and the hole at least partially filled. You can see a small fleet of tugs nuzzled in together, with Waratah and two former navy vessels, Bronzewing and Currawong.
Bronzewing is used to manoeuvre James Craig. On an earlier visit to Sydney Heritage Fleet, I accompanied Tim and a retired tugboat worker, Terry, on an excursion down the harbour to tow the tall ship. While Tim was at the wheel, Terry worked the lines at the bow. It was labour-intensive and vocally driven, as instructions were hollered from ship to ship, and from the tug’s bow to the wheelhouse and back again. But Tim and Terry made it look seamless, as Bronzewing persuaded James Craig to move out from its Darling Harbour berth.
‘It’s just a quiet gentle movement,’ Tim told me. ‘And every now and then, you just give it a little more pull.’
To see Bronzewing once more resting beside Waratah provides a good feeling, which I mention to Tim. He’s not surprised, for that is one role of Sydney Heritage Fleet, ‘to reassure people that this was a working harbour, and this place is living evidence of that’.
We take a ladder down into the heart of Waratah, to her meticulously kept engine. Tim explains how it works, but I see only a jigsaw of wheels and shafts. He also shows me where the coal is shovelled to fuel Waratah, and the tray of soot that has to be emptied. I ask who does all this.
‘Volunteers,’ he replies.
As we inspect Waratah’s inner workings, Tim talks about the flesh and blood that keeps this steel and wood alive. Among the fleet’s 450 volunteers are former maritime tradesmen and waterfront workers, but there are also retired professionals, such as surgeons and lawyers. And it’s not a boys’ club; there are women among the workers. Tim observes that, for many, the volunteers are giving new life not just to the vessels they work on but also to themselves, as they develop new skills and new friends. What’s more, he says, the Heritage Fleet is saving skills.
‘Without a place like this, we’d have lost so many of the skills that have been here on the harbour for a long, long time,’ he says. ‘These skills keep vessels afloat.’
And as he watches his neighbours, such as those who build and maintain wharves, being pushed out by the dollars and desire for waterfront living, Tim knows those skills will become even rarer.
‘It’s the Catch-22 here; the harbour becomes the carrot to bring people here, but then that population gets so big and the price of real estate goes up so much, it just gets too expensive to operate near the water, and it’s just for the very, very wealthy,’ Tim muses.
‘I think the saddest part is that the commercial operators are being squeezed out. People forget that what they do is maintain the harbour, maintain those waterfront properties. I’d like to see the commercial operators along here stay, to keep Sydney Harbour in the beautiful state it is today, because without them, it would go to wrack and ruin very quickly.
‘Aesthetically, some of the harbour looks absolutely beautiful, but we can’t live on beauty alone. We still have some shipping, and those wharves need to be maintained. So I’m hoping common sense might prevail, that a compromise be made, and we remember what the harbour is about. So lock in the infrastructure, keep the harbour operational, and ensure it’s not only interesting to look at but viable.’
WHAT IS collected and cherished at Sydney Heritage Fleet still holds some relevance back out under Anzac Bridge and along the western shore of what is called Glebe Island and around into White Bay. Tugs still chaperone ships into deeper water here. This section still looks kind of like a working harbour. The wharves wrapping around Glebe Island into White Bay handle bulk goods. For many years, Glebe Island – which is actually not an island – was part of the change to containerisation in shipping. Containers were also handled along the opposite shore at White Bay. But then that all moved to Botany Bay, leaving a huge expanse of concrete and a whole lot of head scratching as to what it could become. Still, the area has been through change before.
In the 1850s, an abattoir was developed on Glebe Island, with refined sandstone buildings constructed for the slaughter of animals. The waste was pumped into the harbour in such quantities that Blackwattle and Rozelle bays would sometimes look as though they were flowing with blood. Sharks would also feast on the waste. Residents complained about not just the pollution in the water but in the air. The odours were rank. Despite the complaints and a government inquiry, the abattoir didn’t close until 1916, moving upriver to Homebush.
Along the north-western side of Glebe Island is a row of grain silos. They’ve been here since the 1920s, and in a city that was not yet reaching for the sky, the silos were considered landmarks. In the lead-up to the Olympics, they must have been seen a
s ugly. From the Anzac Bridge side, the complex was tarted up with a bizarre trompe l’oeil, so that the silos looked like ancient temple columns, with indents depicting muscular athletes who have vaulted from the decorations on a Grecian urn. From the silos’ other side, however, on the water, there’s no hiding what they are, and they’re painted in dun colours of grey, brown and cream.
Near the silos, at the end of the bay, is the disused and derelict White Bay Power Station, with its twin chimneys. When I turn and look back down White Bay, I barely notice the industries and businesses flanking it as I’m fixed by the view to the Harbour Bridge. That view tends to block out everything else from the vision – or, at least, it can shape how everything else around it is seen.
When he was the New South Wales Premier, Mike Baird called this area an urban wasteland. The New South Wales Government’s development arm has had a grand plan for this stretch, which is part of what it calls the Bays Precinct. As Mike Baird outlined, the power station and Glebe Island could become an ‘innovation hub’. He forecast how this could become a vibrant waterfront destination, where, instead of importing sand, it could be used for exporting silicon. The term ‘wasteland’ came as a surprise, and as a bit of an insult, to the maritime businesses operating on Glebe Island and around White Bay. Where the Premier and his planners saw potential, those who relied on access to the harbour could see their livelihoods ebbing away, and more of the waterfront’s traditions being wiped out.
Further along White Bay on its northern shore, where containers used to be stacked, the shipping industry is flourishing. It is a cruise ship terminal. The gentle waves of the terminal’s steel roof sit under industrial girders, so that the past and present co-exist. Not that some of the neighbours are happy about the terminal. In his ‘A Portrait of Sydney’, Kenneth Slessor wrote evocatively about being able to look down streets into ship’s funnels at the bottom of the garden. The present-day residents are concerned about what comes out of the ships’ funnels. They have argued emissions from the fuel burnt by the docked cruise ships have been damaging their health. A little further past the terminal, I see outside a waterfront home a placard facing the harbour that reads, ‘Cruise Emissions Poison Us’.
I’ve sailed on cruise ships out of and into the White Bay terminal. From the ship’s top deck, I could look over the terminal to the row of terrace houses that marked the edge of a thick clump of homes on the Balmain peninsula. The division between the suburb and harbour life is the width of a narrow street, which is what makes Balmain so attractive to so many. Wandering over to the ship’s starboard side, I could see to Pyrmont, where the cruise liners used to berth in the post-war years. That wharf area has been colonised by apartments and offices, so cruise ships would not fit there anymore.
But the cruise ships are coming in and out of the harbour with ever increasing regularity. In the 2015/2016 financial year, there were about 325 cruise ship visits in New South Wales, most of them to Sydney. Demand exceeds wharf availability, and the biggest cruise companies have reportedly pulled some of their ships out of Sydney, because there are not enough berths. Yet again, the harbour is over-loved, and there’s simply not enough of it to go around to satisfy all those who want a slice of it.
As I paddle on around Peacock Point, which is marked by an old anchor, I can’t help but wonder what the early occupants of the small cottages scrambling up the steep hill would have made of the change to their suburb. If they could return from the 19th century, they would recognise some of the structures, built from local stone, but they would notice their workplaces at the bottom of the hill had gone, and then they would faint when they heard the prices their humble cottage or terrace house now sold for. This area, then as now, has willed many to fall in love with water. The bookseller James R. Tyrrell, who grew up overlooking Johnstons Bay, reminisced about his Tom Sawyer existence by the harbour in the 1880s, even being allowed to play pirates on a visiting sailing ship. All around him lived seamen and captains, with tales and mementos of a life on ships, and down at the waterfront were timberyards and slipways.
Along the shore, there are scant reminders of those little industries. Just near the Balmain East ferry terminal at the end of Darling Street is a two-storey sandstone building. It was a boat store, believed to have been built in the late 1800s. But vessels have taken shape on this site since the 1830s. A boatbuilder, John Bell, established a yard here in the 1830s. Bell’s shipyard was bought by brothers John and Thomas Fenwick in 1883. The Fenwicks had a tugboat company, which would grow into one of the biggest around the harbour. Well into the 20th century, Fenwick tugs could be seen tied up at a private wharf outside the boat store. The tugs and the wharf have gone, but the stone building has been restored, clinging onto the shore and the waterfront traditions that created it.
The maritime character of Balmain East remains not just in a physical way. Its spirit wanders up the streets and lanes, past the rows of cottages and somnolent veranda-hooded shops. It whorls around the corner buildings that were once pubs crammed with seamen unsteady on their legs, searching for something like home, or perhaps trying to forget where they came from, or maybe they were just beyond remembering. Balmain East still looks and feels like a maritime town even from the water, as I sit in my kayak, riding the ferries’ wakes. This place was essentially made by the water. It is a community built on stone and scented with salt. Water has defined many of those who have lived here.
In rugby league terms, Neil Bevan (no relation) is a Balmain boy. He was at the 1939 grand final, which was won by the Balmain Tigers. Actually, his mother was there. And, therefore, so was he. Neil was in his mother’s womb.
In territorial terms, Neil Bevan is a Balmain East boy. He grew up in a sandstone house with a slate roof, built in 1880, down a pathway overlooking Jubilee Bay on the southern side of the peninsula. The bay received its name from a floating dock opened in 1880s, known as the Victoria Jubilee Floating Dock, in honour of Queen Victoria. By the time Neil was a boy, the dock was gone, and so was Queen Victoria, but the shoreline remained pebbled with boatyards and ship repair businesses.
The harbour provided for Neil and his family. Around the rocks, they would catch crabs, and they would string out a fishing net in the bay. More than nourish him and his neighbours, the harbour filled the community’s work and leisure hours.
‘Down the east end, just about everyone worked around the waterfront,’ he says.
Neil trained at Cockatoo Island as a shipwright and followed his trade around the harbour and out to sea. There was work always to be found.
‘The harbour was full of ships at every berth, all the way around Pyrmont, Darling Harbour and into Walsh Bay, and a few around in Woolloomooloo Bay,’ he remembers.
Neil has studied the traditions of his trade, particularly an organisation that was formed to protect workers, the Shipwrights’ Provident Union of New South Wales. It seems to make sense that Neil’s interested in union history. After all, the Australian Labor Party is considered to have been born in Balmain, at a meeting in a local pub, the Unity Hall Hotel, in 1891, just a year after a massive maritime workers’ strike across the colonies. Neil despairs at seeing those traditions and the touchstones of his childhood disappear from around the peninsula. Even his own boyhood home was demolished for a block of units. And although he now lives away from the harbour, he still visits the peninsula and identifies himself as belonging there.
‘People say, “You come from Balmain”,’ Neil says, ‘and I say, “No. I come from Balmain East”.’
Tracing the Balmain East shoreline, I pass a few slipways on the properties of mansions, and anaemic-brick apartment blocks from the later 20th century. On a few of the balconies are residents – a young woman sipping coffee, a middle-aged man tending to plants, a father playing with a small child – each doing their own thing, unaware of each other’s presence, sharing a harbour view, but not with each other. It is as though an Edward Hopper painting has sprouted by the harbour.
Leaving behind the shore and the seeming disconnect of those living on it, I paddle the couple of hundred metres north to Goat Island.
TO MY eyes, Goat Island looks like a large sandstone lump that managed to keep its head above water when the valleys were drowned and the harbour was shaped. To Aboriginal people, it was known as Mel-Mel, or ‘eye’. On a map, the island looks a little like an eye, but perhaps it was Mel-Mel because from its high ground, about 40 metres above the water, you could see in all directions around the harbour. The British gave it the less poetic name of Goat Island. It’s uncertain why, but it may have been that the goats brought on the First Fleet were landed on the island to graze.
For a small island of little more than 5 hectares, a lot of history and roles have been stacked upon, and gouged from, it since 1788. It has been a quarry, a military installation, a prison, a water police station, a fire brigade base, a biological laboratory, a harbourmaster’s quarters, a depot for the Maritime Services Board, a shipyard, a television production set – and a home.
Approaching the island along its south-western side, I see the different eras packed in together, as colonial sandstone buildings jostle with a row of boatsheds, a wharf and a couple of slipways, one with a large cruiser on it. Looming over the shipyard is a large 1920s hammerhead crane. I don’t land on the western side, as the shipyard is being run as a commercial operation. I paddle around to the northern face of the island, where there is an old marina, with a small weatherboard shed on the wharf at its entrance. Hundreds of workers used to hop on and off ferries around here when the Maritime Services Board depot and shipyard were in full swing half a century ago. Today the marina is empty but for one National Parks and Wildlife Service launch and the forlorn slap of waves. But the launch tells me the island’s resident ranger is home.
I see Ben Cottier, a field officer for NPWS, outside a rust-mottled and sawtooth-roofed workshop at the end of the marina. Ben, a gentle, lean man with an easy smile, indicates for me to land on a small indent of a beach near the workshop. He later explains the indent is part of a deeper incision cut into the island. It was a moat to separate the convicts from water police officers, when they were based on the eastern end of the island from 1837.
