The Harbour Read online

  Competing against other boats in regattas is what they train for. But the young rowers are finding training on Parramatta River increasingly difficult because of other boats, especially the RiverCats.

  Steven argues that with the ferries ploughing through the water at twenty-two knots an hour, they push out pressure waves that create a swell, and a challenge, for the crews. As he says bluntly, ‘you can’t easily row now’. The ferries’ waves are pushing the rowers off the river; the crews of Scots College, and those of other schools, head for the relatively calmer waters in the coves, such as Hen and Chicken Bay, to train and to stage smaller competitions.

  Steven says crews are also dealing with the ‘in-fill’ of waterways with developments, especially marinas. And with the marinas come more pleasure boats, and some of those with engines, he argues, are plainly aggressive towards those who rely on paddles for power.

  A tradition is literally at risk of being swamped on Parramatta River.

  As residential development continues along the banks, many feel even bleaker about the future of rowing on the river. With more residents comes the need for more ferries and more wharves, and the New South Wales Government has committed millions of dollars to building infrastructure along, and on, the river. Rowers have resisted the encroachment into their sport. In early 2016, a representative body, Rowing NSW, voiced its concerns about a new ferry wharf and interchange planned for about half way up the river at Rhodes, where industrial plants have been replaced by clusters of apartments. The organisation warned it would make rowing more dangerous on this stretch of the river, and it called for the government to give rowers a stronger voice in deciding how the waterway was used. However, as Steven Adams well knows, you need a very strong voice to be heard over the din of construction and the ringing in politicians’ ears of what sounds like progress.

  ‘We’d like to think it will keep going as long as it can,’ Steven says of the future of rowing on Parramatta River. ‘But we’re up against it, and there’s not enough support from the government to protect the heritage.’

  Inscribed above the crossed oars in the Scots College Boat Club’s centre window is a phrase in Gaelic. Steven and Garry tell me it roughly translates as, ‘Go Together in Brave Hearts’. That motto ripples downstairs and into the river. Competitive rowing, on even the calmest of waters, takes more than toned muscles; it requires resilient souls, determined minds, and brave hearts together. As for rowers remaining on this river, it may well take all those qualities and more to pull against the inexorable flow of political and commercial demands. For the very same waters that can help build character for the future can also wash away all that stand in the way of those who seek money, power and, that most amorphous and 21st century of words, lifestyle.

  GLADESVILLE. THE very name sounds green. Say ‘Glades’ and you picture trees. But the suburb along a stretch of Parramatta River’s northern bank was named not because of some environmental inspiration but after John Glade, one of the earliest British settlers in the area. Glade bought additional land, which folded around a bay, from John Doody, a former convict who had the ability to draw glades; he was a botanical artist. In time, Glade’s name was attached to not just the land but the water as well. Doodys Bay became Glades Bay.

  As I kayak into the bay, it is possible to see a semblance of a glade on the shore. The mangroves thicken, and the muddy bank slurps at the water. Having flowed out of the river, the water becomes sluggish, as though it is taking on the consistency of its colour: chocolate. Just as the water slows, so does the sense of time, as I look at the bushy eastern shore. I figure this is a view of how the banks used to be in these little coves, before the arrival of Glade and Doody, but a walking track beside the bay teaches me otherwise.

  The Wulaba Track takes you through a corridor of bush following a creek to the bay, and back to the time when the Wallumedegal people lived around here. Back then, there were few mangroves; instead, the banks were sandy and the rocky outcrops encrusted with oysters. But with the Europeans came land-clearing, and this led to silt and nutrients being washed down the creek into the bay, allowing the mangroves to thrive. Still, the sight of growth is taken as a healthy sign by those who remember when the shore was degraded.

  ‘Oh, it’s good to see them sprouting,’ says a man walking along the boardwalk, who has stopped to look at the green buds of mangroves bursting out of the mud.

  His name is Sen. He has lived in the area for more than twenty years and enjoys wandering along the Wulaba Track to the water.

  In the 1990s, Sen would watch the fishing trawlers still working in the river. The trawlers disappeared, as the authorities declared fish caught around here might not be fit to eat due to contaminants in the river bed and water. That didn’t dissuade Sen.

  ‘I used to fish around here, and I wasn’t afraid to eat the fish,’ he says. ‘And nothing’s happened to me – yet!’

  Sen points to the rocks next to a public ramp, where I’ve landed Pulbah Raider.

  ‘I used to eat oysters from here in the mid-90s,’ he says.

  The rocks still wear a girdle of oyster shells, but I presume they are empty, long eaten out or dead from pollution.

  ‘No, there are oysters here,’ counters Sen. ‘I’d be still game to eat one or two. It wouldn’t do anything drastic to you.’

  After meeting Sen, I think of him whenever I see a trawler moored in bays along the river. Not that I see many. They may be outnumbered by pleasure boats, but the trawlers stand out as a reminder that this river was once more of a workplace than a playground. Paddling the river, I see few commercial vessels operating, only the occasional barge carrying equipment.

  Just off the peninsula at Putney, I see an apparition slowly moving on the water. It is a vehicular ferry, providing a link not only across the few hundred metres of the river from Putney to Mortlake but also to a service that has disappeared from the rest of the harbour. Launched in 1928, the Mortlake ferry – or the Putney punt, depending on which side of the river you are on – is grasping the past as tenaciously as it holds the cables that guide it across the water. The ferry’s operation exudes a gentle rhythm. It waits on one bank as up to eighteen vehicles drive up the ramp and park on its deck. The gates come down, and the punt sets off. For the next five minutes, the vehicles’ occupants are compelled to go with the flow of another time and soak in the experience of slow travel. Other vessels, even the RiverCats, have to wait while the punt trundles across the river like a dignified old lady. Then the punt nudges up the bank on the other side, the gate is lifted, and the vehicles fire up and prepare to accelerate back to the tempo of the 21st Century.

  As the punt marks time travelling across the river, the RiverCats scurry up and down the waterway. They weave a jagged pattern from terminal to terminal along the banks. Between Circular Quay and Parramatta, there are eighteen ferry terminals and about 22 kilometres of river. They may be running to a schedule, but the ferries are also carried along by history. Commercial passenger craft have been on this river since 1789. The first boat built to carry goods and passengers along the river was named Rose Hill Packet, but this reputedly ugly assemblage of wood was better known as ‘The Lump’. Relying on sails and oars, which the passengers had to grasp as well, ‘The Lump’ could take up to a week to finish the return voyage. The RiverCats cover the journey from Circular Quay to Parramatta in just under an hour. Then again, ferries in the 1890s were taking only roughly an hour and a quarter.

  ‘The Lump’ was followed onto the river by a mangy fleet of small passage boats. The first regular service on the river was in 1793, with passengers being charged the substantial fare of one shilling. From March 1831, the oars and sails of those little vessels were shrouded by steam. The future puffed onto the river with Sophia Jane and, shortly after, the first locally built steamship, Surprise.

  On Parramatta River, fortunes rose and fell like the tide, as different ferry designs and companies came and went. One vessel that could carry about 100
passengers relied literally on horsepower. Experiment had four horses running on a treadmill. Occasionally, the horses would stop and Experiment would float backwards, as did the business, until she was fitted with an engine.

  As land transportation improved, the pressure on river ferries increased. Passenger services were shut down a number of times, as demand dwindled. But the ferry has ploughed back into relevance on the river. These days more than three million journeys are taken each year on Parramatta River catamaran services.

  THE RIVERCATS do as boats have done for more than two centuries on Parramatta River; they stop at Kissing Point. And with an evocative name like that, Kissing Point is almost a siren call to all on the water. Indeed, many have pulled up on the bank to rest on the grassy verge, including the colony’s early governors. One report has it that the point earnt its name when the second governor, John Hunter, was rewarded with a kiss for helping a woman step onto dry land. What lures me ashore, however, is not any air of romance around the rocky outcrop’s name but my bladder.

  Aside from environmental considerations, there is nothing practical about urinating from a kayak. What’s more, it could be lethal. Just off Kissing Point in the early days of the colony, a sailor was ‘easing himself’ at the edge of his boat, when he fell overboard and drowned.

  So I paddle onto the bank just below the Concord and Ryde Sailing Club, its weatherboard and corrugated iron home perched over the water on piers and reminding passers-by that sails can still be seen on this river, especially on summer weekends. The shore is studded with shells, so when the kayak’s hull is rubbed by the bank, Pulbah Raider sounds as though it is sighing with relief. Perhaps that’s just me anticipating the sound I’m about to make.

  Once comfort is restored and I have time to look around, I notice the Wallumai wind sculpture on the bank. As well as honouring the Aboriginal people who have drawn sustenance from the river, the sculpture gives shape to what so many seek along this reach – it features three fish suspended on poles, their polished steel scales gleaming in the noonday sun. Wallumai is an Aboriginal word for ‘snapper’. Sitting under the fish sculpture is an older couple. I wonder if they have been moved to visit Kissing Point because of the name. But no, Donald and Beryl Chivas, married for more than sixty years, are here for a picnic lunch and a little reminiscing.

  When I mention how the point’s name may give visitors ideas, Donald sets me straight on its origins.

  ‘Oh, there are rumours about why it’s called Kissing Point,’ he says, ‘but how it got its name was back in the early days of the colony, when the boats were coming up here. If they came too close to the point and weren’t careful, the hulls touched the bottom of the river. They “kissed” it. A nice way of putting it, isn’t it?’

  Donald and Beryl have lived near here for as long as they’ve been married. For forty years, Donald worked for the Australian Gas Light company, which had the large works just across the river at Mortlake. His job took him all over Sydney, but when he was in the area, one of Donald’s unofficial tasks was to collect green weed from the shallows around Kissing Point, for the boss to use as bait on his weekend fishing trips. Apparently the weed was terrific for catching luderick. He doubts he could collect as much green weed these days, with the river cleaner than he remembers it.

  Donald pauses and gazes across the river to the peninsula where the massive gasworks he knew so well once stood. Then his eyes drift back to this side of the river, to the present. He looks at Beryl and gently murmurs, ‘There are a lot of memories triggered by different points of this river.’

  MEMORIES ARE under the surface as well. Buried in the bed of Kissing Point Bay is the keel of HMAS Stuart. The Royal Australian Navy ship served in operations in the Mediterranean then around New Guinea during the Second World War, only to have her battle honours recognised after the war by being decommissioned, placed on the disposal list and sold for scrap. From cruising the world’s seas, she ended her days in pieces by Parramatta River.

  Other remnants of Australia’s maritime history are along the bank. A few hundred metres upriver from Kissing Point was one of the country’s most successful boatyards. This was where the Halvorsen family built hundreds of vessels for almost four decades and, in the process, helped shape Australians’ idea of a luxury boat. Some very beautiful and very well-known craft slid into the water here.

  In late 1924, Norwegian-born Lars Halvorsen arrived in Sydney, bringing boatbuilding skills learnt from his father and in shipyards in the United States and South Africa. He also brought a dream of establishing a family company. Even before his wife and seven children had reached Sydney, he had his first commission, building a yacht in a rented boatshed at Drummoyne, further down Parramatta River.

  As orders flowed in and word of his craftsmanship spread, Lars Halvorsen kept upgrading his boatsheds, ending up in a large yard in Neutral Bay, on the harbour’s North Shore. Lars Halvorsen also bought and sold boats, including a yacht called Sirocco. He sold that to a Professor Flynn, from Tasmania, who was buying it for his son, Errol. Young Errol arrived to pick up the yacht and sail it on to New Guinea. He invited Lars’ son Carl to join him, but that was vetoed. The yacht was wrecked in New Guinea, but once he was in Hollywood and became a movie star, Errol Flynn had another Sirocco built.

  Lars Halvorsen died in 1936. His sons carried on the business. They bought a couple of hectares of land on Parramatta River to build a new yard just near Kissing Point, at Ryde. When the main shed, a massive building that could have sheltered a football field, was erected, the family was concerned about attracting enough work to pay for it. However, world events took care of that.

  During the Second World War, Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd built about 250 vessels for the Australian, US and Dutch armed forces. At the peak of production, the company had a workforce of 350. Author and Lars’ granddaughter Randi Svensen says the Halvorsen brothers pioneered the concept of mass production for Australia’s defence department and were able to build two 38-foot air-sea rescue boats a week at their Ryde yard.

  In addition to the boats they built for the war effort, others that the Halvorsens had constructed for pleasure were seconded from their owners. When the navy commandeered those boats, they became known as ‘the Hollywood Fleet’.

  After the war, the boats that gave the ‘Hollywood Fleet’ its lustre attracted Hollywood when the stars visited. The Halvorsens produced a fleet of motor cruisers at its Ryde boatshed, and they were hired out for glamorous holidays on the Hawkesbury River, or to entertain the famous. Among those who went cruising on a Halvorsen boat were Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart and Alfred Hitchcock.

  More than highly polished boats of beauty took shape in the big shed. On the Parramatta River bank, the firm also built yachts that raced in the Sydney to Hobart competition, and its workers created Australia’s first America’s Cup challenger for the 1962 bid. Randi Svensen recalls the yacht was shrouded in tarpaulin in the shed, but she took a peek and saw the stars of the Southern Cross painted on the bow. Randi was convinced the yacht would be called Southern Cross, and she was shocked when the boat’s owner, Sir Frank Packer, named her in honour of his late wife, Gretel.

  Randi holds childhood memories of visiting that ‘cavernous space’ at Ryde, which ‘was basic but functional and highly organised’.

  ‘It was always a thrill to see the boats, either under construction or being repaired or maintained,’ Randi recalls.

  The Halvorsens sold the Ryde yard to the Royal Australian Navy in 1980, but it has since become a commercial boat repair operation. The big shed remains on the bank, although the sum of the years has knocked it about. The wharves and jetties have also been battered by time; in places, the timber is warping, bowing and soughing towards the river. I’ve seen a diverse fleet tied up around the yard, including jetboats that give tourists a thrill on the main harbour by turning their stomachs to swill. I reckon Lars Halvorsen and his sons would approve of those boats. To make ends meet during the Depression, t
hey charged a shilling for joy rides on the harbour in the family’s speedboat, Kangaroo.

  To Randi Svensen, the Ryde yard was pivotal not just to the family business but to the development of boatbuilding in Australia. In that massive shed, new ideas and designs were tested and formed. As Randi says of the Halvorsens’ venture by the river, ‘Ryde was ahead of its time when built and continued to keep up with the times, until the times caught up with wooden boatbuilding.’

  LONG BEFORE there were boats being produced on this site along the river, there was beer. Shakespeare once had a character declare, ‘I will make it felony to drink small beer’, but it was a felon who was Australia’s first big brewer.

  James Squire was convicted of highway robbery in England and transported to New South Wales with the First Fleet. In 1795, having received a conditional pardon, Squire was granted a 30-acre (12.1 hectares) plot near Kissing Point. Within a few years, he had established an inn, the Malting Shovel, on the banks of the river. Being roughly halfway between Sydney Cove and Parramatta, the public house became a beacon that couldn’t be passed by boatmen and their passengers. His beer, simply called Squire’s Brew, may have attracted drinkers from upriver and down, but the tavern was merely value adding for James Squire.

  In his land at Kissing Point, Squire sowed hops and harvested opportunity. Governor Philip Gidley King was encouraging colonists to drink beer rather than what he saw as the more debilitating rum. So Squire was satisfying official tastes, and his land holdings grew. He also built a large brewery. Randi Svensen says the foundations of the brewery, along with Squire’s wharf, were still visible when the Halvorsen family had their yard on the site.

  By the time he died in 1822, James Squire was one of the wealthiest men in the colony. His efforts were preserved not just in bottles of beer but works of art. One watercolour image of Squire’s riverside property in the early 19th century shows the buildings and a jetty, with a sailing boat tied up to it. A man is rolling a barrel along the jetty, and also standing in the foreground near the boat are two Aboriginal men. As in that piece of art, the life of James Squire was closely connected to the original inhabitants, in particular one of the most significant and influential men in the early colony, Woollarawarre Bennelong.