Shipwreck

Ξ June 29th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ history |

The excitement of shipwreck is a universal emotion.

Spectators are rarely callous, curiously and empathically staring at some stricken lady of the sea torn upon rocks, or straddling the endless waves that would, if they impossibly could, carry her to dry sand.

The cruel sea, pounding the fragile carcass of this artificial ocean-dweller, is merely extracting the ultimate penalty for imperiling its care and cargo.  

With no lives lost, a sea wreck at close range is an imposing, awe-inspiring, and exciting experience, stirring a child’s fascination with large damaged toys.

Image left: Pasha Bulker is fully two football fields long, dwarfing the beach and its suddenly-tiny Beach Pavilion at center-left.

Then, in broken pride, comes sorrow that a magnificent creation be so cruelly and serendipitously wasted.

If shipwreck can be distilled to positive and fascinating elements, thus was the Pasha Bulker that arrived so dramatically and, well, so tidily, upon the smooth white sands of Nobbys Beach, Newcastle, Australia, in the teeth of a ferocious, punishing winter cyclone.

None were injured - except crew’s pride and captain’s career - with the vessel mildly crumpled and bent beneath the Plimsoll. And when the drama faded the City of Newcastle was presented with the most magnificent statuesque icon, freshly painted, shiny and not necessarily undignified in her chosen respite.

With all the air of a grand ocean-going vessel deliberately resting at her chosen port - but on  terms of her choosing, the storm simply a means, not a cause.

It’s not the first shipwreck to visit Newcastle’s port or beaches, nor will it be the last - while ever stuff-ups remain immutable laws of nature expressed through humankind’s faltering endeavours, and misfortune stands a simple given.

In 1974, during an identical winter rain depression, the 600-foot Sygna floundered in Stockton Bight, then was driven ashore in gale-force winds and high seas. During salvage Sygna stuck fast and broke in half.

Image right: Identical circumstances led the Norwegian carrier Sygna to an identical, yet permanent, fate on Stockton Beach, north of Newcastle Harbour, in 1974.

All manner of schooners, cutters, barquentine, brigantine, paddle and screw steamer, dredge, barge, sloop, ketch, launch, and .. err, ship, have prostrated themselves upon Newcastle’s beaches, rocks, cliffs, breakwaters, bights, bars, and banks - or sadly simply disappeared without trace.

In its first century (1800 - 1900) port traffic comprised a steady stream of typically small ocean-going vessels loaded with timber gained from the shores of the Hunter, Patterson, and Williams Rivers, and many of these tiny ships were built in small shipyards up the river.

Larger ships, to thousands of tons, bore Newcastle’s high-grade coal to Sydney and far-flung ports around Australia, Asia and the Indian Ocean.

In its short life of 200 years Newcastle has hosted an average of one shipwreck a year.

Image left: Oyster Bank, now overlaid by the northern breakwater of Port Hunter entrance

Testimony to improvements in weather forecasting, navigational aids, and maritime procedures, the last four decades have seen only a handful losses.

First honours went to a 25-ton sloop called “Norfolk” that ran aground at Pirate Point in 1800, sailing from the Hawkesbury River to climes unknown. Pirate Point indeed, as the Norfolk - which Bass and Flinders famously used to circumnavigate Tasmania - had been commandeered by a bunch of convicts who made for Port Hunter when spooked by a wild storm.

About 32 vessels have come to grief at Stockton, most on the Beach, a few on the western side, many of them  significant-sized boats, including 14 steamers, two motor vessels, and a swag of schooners and large sailing ships.

Twenty-six more floundered and died on Oyster Bank on the northern side of the entrance channel, where the northern breakwater was later built..

Thirty two steam and sail ships ended their careers on the south side of the channel, which is of course Nobbys, originally “Coal Island” and later joined to the mainland by a breakwater that created Nobbys Beach.

Adolphe, a beautiful four-masted, two-year old, 32/2400 tonne, steel barquentine had foul luck to be wrecked on Oyster Bank near the entrance when a tow line to one of two tugs failed in huge pounding waves.

Interesting, but till the Posha Spicer threw itself upon these golden sands, only one other similar event is recorded, that of the Maianbar, a twin-prop steam ship one tenth the size of Pasha B., but equally impressive beside the pavilion walkway (see image below).

The Maianbar, a 490 gwt 30-year old steamer, ended its life on Nobbys beach after a tow line snapped in 1940, and it drifted ashore to sit high and dry in scenes  reminiscent of the Playboy Balker drama.

Crews were miraculously rescued time and again from such situations - not by Westpac Choppers, as Ole Sydney Cove had none spare for King’s Town, but -  by a crew of very brave men in a giant row-boat and deviously clever rocket-fired ropes.

At least 26 vessels met their sad end in this infamous spot around the turn of the 18th to 19th century, forming a breakwater in their own right, one upon t’other. No wonder the oysters loved it!

 Berbice, a 20-year old, 50-meter triple-masted sailing ship of 700 tons, washed ashore at the foot of Stockton Beach by the usual suspect, a south-east gale and huge seas on 5th June 1888.

The classically-lined 1200-ton sail ship Susan Gilmore (Gilmour) lay like a beached whale, another victim to that ultimately wasteful maritime incident, the all-too-common “parting tow rope.”

Starting to sound like an insurance scam.

Our good captain of the Poncha Bjelka is only the second commanding officer in a hundred years to lob one on the wrong side of the lighthouse (correct me if I’m wrong).

Misfortune seems the be the common theme, either the bad luck to be caught in unusually severe wind and swell, or fickle fate parting a tow.

As size goes, this latest misadventure is the largest, being a standard Panamax, second largest the Sygna at 53/35500 tonne  (NT/GT).

Polka Dulka seems more likely to remain than float away, a truly most awesome but unwelcome guest in this totally inconvenient landing spot.

Raining

Ξ June 27th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Weather |

Why is that news?

This is a dry continent, and drier than usual recently, with 95% of the State of NSW officially drought-stricken. So dry, in fact, that the State Government only a few weeks ago was in panic mode, initiating desalination for the coastal city of Sydney as their huge Warragamba Dam edged towards empty - no joke for the 4 million humourless Sydneyites.

As June 2007 draws to an end, the Hunter region - and in particular, Newcastle - got more rain than anywhere else in Australia, and that’s significant considering some of the wet tropical and temperate deluge magnets around this ole’ island.

June looks like ending with over 600mm of rain. Yearly average around these parts is only 1000mm! So it flooded everywhere, flash floods that is.

Regular flood zones copped it as usual but the city slickers around Newcastle town were deeply shocked as they, too, experienced unheard of inundation for suburban streets. Unheard of, that is, for anyone under 50 years age.

Every suburb or town built on a creek bed discovered what happens in a deluge, when the concrete-lined drains spilt their content into the surrounding flat-lands - now permanently coated with shops, factories and houses. It’s with some irony Newcastle City Council distributes a brochure declaring - to the brick wall that is its citizens’ ears -  that half the city’s properties - some 24,000 - could be flooded at some in the future, as in any day now.

Flooding is a natural process caused by heavy rainfall. 

Flooding has always happened.

It helped to shape the creeks, swamps and flood plains over which Newcastle has been superimposed.

In smaller catchments, including most of Newcastle’s suburbs, it only takes a short time for intense rainfall to rush down the catchment, overwhelm drainage systems and cause flooding.

This flash flooding will happen so quickly there is presently no warning.  It is estimated water could rise to several meters deep in less than an hour in some suburbs.  Flash flooding lasts for only a few hours.

Ironic indeed, and stopped the litigants in their tracks.

It was nevertheless astonishing to witness. Suburban roads I’ve driven along for for fifty years suddenly littered with ruined vehicles and flattened fences, footpaths piled with sodden carpet and dissolving particleboard furniture.

From the Council works depot in Turton road through to Garden City  (sorry, “Westfield” is too ugly a name) lay a trail of water-damaged cars, flattened fences and sodden carpets.

Most unsettling of all was the breach of personal safety and security in the city.

Metropolitan streets are a timeless zone of stability. To a child they seem to have existed forever, and even though as an adult I discover the bitumen has only been there less than a century, as have most of the buildings and shops, it still just isn’t right that the old strip should be under a meter of smelly muddy water.

The excellent image below was contained in an unsigned email circulating last week and shows our once famous hub “The Bank Corner” suffering the indignity just described.

Who’d have thought? Well, Almost anyone over 50.

Though floods are par in Australia (and the world), and country towns built beside large rivers in flood plains are no stranger to this regular visitor, the Maitland floods of 1955 stand out as a national drama of historic proportions.

That was a wet decade, the 50s. And guess what? It flooded in Hunter Street, just like the June ‘07 long weekend, as it has many time in the past million years, and will again.

Is it global warming?

I understand global warming means more severe weather, higher sea levels, more extremes for desert or tropical land, rather than simply warmer days.

The last decade in Newcastle has seemed, well, hotter. Perhaps because I’m getting older. Maybe because I live in Newcastle near the ocean that moderates extremes, having spent a decade at Maitland relishing those deliciously cool nights that smelled of green crops.

I recall, however, during that time perhaps three occasions when the Hunter River almost breached the levees at the end of our street in Horseshoe Bend.

Old timers of late have reminisced of weather they remember (or imagine), and now pine for - as the Norwegian Blue pines for the fjords. Like winter cyclones, summers that began with a hot week then lapsed into three months of cool rain. Or winters that began with a cold week - followed by three months of warmish rain. Or Mothers’ Day chrysanthemum crops being routinely flattened each year by a week of windy rain prior to that celebrated day.

Well, this month it happened!

The first real cyclone I can clearly remember since the 1970s when the Sygna was blown ashore at Stockton, or Tomago House lost that huge historic pine tree in a ferocious windy storm. The first triple rain depression to hit the NSW coast for 57 years.

Floods in Goulbourn (where the Big Merino lives) after a decade of water restrictions!

Floods in Sheffield, England - the worst on record, they say.

Firestorms in California - again.

Sigh!

,

Gidday! New in town?

Ξ June 26th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ development, history |

Two hundred years of growth from a timber-getters’ camp to a great industrial region is only eight family generations.

Octogenarians recall relatives who witnessed the celebrations of 1900, when a Newcastle, a mere century old, possessed already its major public buildings and infrastructure, and could describe the building of the first church, jail, or police station.

The first half of last century saw the area’s wealth sunk into even finer structures and the creation of steel milling that turned this large country town into a mighty industrial city.

The second half witnessed manufacturing’s  astonishing disappearance, yet the Hunter barely stumbled as smart money moved on to the next transient opportunity.

Newcastle city is essentially unchanged one-hundred years on - other than the loss of tramways and coal-carrying railways that criss-crossed the central basin of suburbs, and the filling of surround foothills to the brink with suburban streets.

Thirty years ago the view east from Newcastle’s hill would seem almost unchanged to, perhaps, a grandparent, reminiscing.

The city reinvented itself upon losing its manufacturing heart in recent decades, docks and warehouses given over to chick yuppie venues and endless landscaping.

A wealthy few  amuse themselves in the dawn of this new millennium by peppering the escarpments overlooking Newcastle’s beautiful golden beaches with high-rise apartments - and it seems too many are not enough.

Those fortunate to work in the city centre and live in the traditional inner suburbs find Newcastle a workers’ paradise, with ten-minute commutes and often dazzling vistas from office windows. Lunch break for the humble white-collar worker can take in both a beach lunch and up-market shopping.

In fact, doing anything or going most anywhere in this pocket metropolis is just 15 minutes across town and park at the door.

We love it!