Cockatoo Island: A different breed

COCKATOO ISLAND

…And now for something completely different. Perhaps stretching the definition of ‘railway locomotive’ to breaking point, ED HURST showcases the self-propelled steam cranes at Sydney’s remarkable Cockatoo Island dockyard.

Any vehicle in which steam is the primary form of motive power could be described as a locomotive – from railway engines to traction engines (more widely categorised as road locomotives) and plenty more besides.But what about steam cranes? More specifically, steam cranes that run on rails. We’re not talking about the cranes built by the likes of Grafton, Cowans Sheldon, or Ransomes & Rapier and used by British railway companies for assisting with permanent way work or recovering derailed rolling stock. The cranes we’re talking about are much bigger, running on rails much wider than standard gauge. Yet, they have a boiler, which burns coal to turn water into steam, which is then passed into a cylinder from which reciprocal motion is converted into rotary motion, driving the machine along its tracks. They are, by definition, locomotives. Just perhaps not the locomotives Steam Railway usually covers…

From prisons to ships

What comes to mind when you think about Sydney? Obviously, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Probably Bondi Beach. Perhaps the Manly Ferry. But after that…? Picture-postcard beaches and one of the world’s most beautiful harbours set against a background of gleaming high-rise buildings, people running about their modern lives like ants…

One thing I bet you don’t think about is an island in the harbour covered in cavernous shipyard buildings, impressively large docks, a menagerie of steam cranes and vivid remnants of a penal colony (shades of Alcatraz, perhaps). Oh, and a small network of usable track, so that some of those steam cranes can occasionally be seen purposefully going through their paces. Most visitors and locals don’t know this even exists, but if you stand on the Harbour Bridge and know where to look, there it is in plain sight…

Cockatoo Island – from the word ‘Wareamah’ in the local Aboriginal language – is the largest in the famous harbour and sits more or less at the confluence of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers. Though developed over the last couple of centuries since colonisation, the island was once heavily wooded. Its natural 32-acre area has been increased by reclamation to a somewhat more spacious 44 acres. Despite the changes, the island remains of great importance to the traditional custodians and owners of the land.

From 1839, the island began to be used as a convict gaol. In some ways, it was almost a ‘meta‐prison’; people who had already been transported to Australia, and found to have committed further offences, were then incarcerated on Cockatoo Island. Prisoners were made to construct their own barracks, and many of the buildings from that period survive to this day. Stone was manually quarried on the island for major construction projects and, in recognition of the island’s excellent qualities for use as a shipyard, between 1847 and 1857, 1.5 million cubic feet of stone was dug out to build Australia’s first dry dock (Fitzroy Dock), which can be seen in some of the pictures accompanying this article. These days, although no longer a working dock, you can see its impressive 196m length and 23m breadth. It was the largest in the southern hemisphere when built; indeed it eclipsed all other engineering projects in Australia at the time. From these early beginnings,Cockatoo Island’s dockyards would come to play an important role for well over a century.

Expanding capacity

The beginning of Cockatoo Island’s maritime history in the 1840s was partly driven by a heightened rivalry in the Pacific between the United States and the European powers – causing Britain to seek out a centre for its naval activities. The deep waters of the harbour made Cockatoo Island perfect for this and the convict workforce was a useful resource with which to kickstart construction. A major shipbuilding and repair facility was founded on the island in 1857 and was to be in continuous use until 1991. Initially, convicts were engaged in scraping and painting vessels, but the tasks carried out here rapidly became both more extensive and more professional. In time, the island played an increasingly vital role during some critical moments in history.

In 1869, the island ceased to be a penal colony, and the prisoners were transferred to another part of Sydney. Soon afterwards, educational institutions for boys and girls were established – often using the former prison buildings – and continued to operate until 1911. These included an industrial training school for girls, a reformatory (for young women convicted of crimes) and a nautical school for boys. Conditions were harsh, particularly in the reformatory.

The dockyard continued to operate alongside, separated from the institutional area on the high ground. In 1888, the female occupants of the island were moved away, and prisoners made a return, staying there for another two decades. This tough and sustained role as a convict site has led parts of the island to acquire UNESCO World Heritage status. It is well worth exploring those structures and trying to imagine how it would have felt being incarcerated there. Just imagine being transported to the other end of the world, thousands of miles away from all that was familiar, often for minor crimes, then ending up doing hard labour on a small island without any apparent hope. Quite a contrast to the glamour of the modern harbour.

In 1890, Sutherland Dock opened, further expanding the island’s industrial capacity and eclipsing the size of Fitzroy Dock – which was still used to work on smaller vessels. By 1913, Cockatoo Island had started to serve the Royal Australian Navy, with the former prison buildings now used as offices – and it would play a pivotal role in the allies’ ability to fight in the southern hemisphere during both world wars. During the 1914-18 war, the island built over 50 ships and repaired over 150. The workforce peaked in 1919 at a remarkable 4,085 people. This period saw investment in new facilities and technology including, impressively, a new power station, which replaced the earlier pumphouse and provided electricity throughout the island.

Electricity was supplied from two steam turbine-driven generators – the largest such plant in the country. This facility fell into disuse after the Second World War, but the key structures (including an impressive chimney and the powerhouse itself, built in Federation Romanesque style) and some of the electrical, hydraulic and pumping equipment remain in place – making it an important time capsule.

Decline and closure

The interwar years saw a decline in the dockyard’s fortunes and the facility was leased to a private company – the Cockatoo Docks & Engineering Company. Work diversified to include building mining machinery and contributions to the massive Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme.

The Second World War saw a renewed, crucial role, and it became the main South Pacific ship repair base for the Allied forces. Cunard liners Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Aquitania and Mauretania were converted into troop ships here in 1940. Nineteen new ships were constructed and major repairs were undertaken to 40 allied warships, including US cruisers New Orleans, Portland, Chester and Chicago. All this required further upgrades to the island’s infrastructure, including the construction of the turbine shop you can see in one of the pictures accompanying this article. In the post-war years, refits to former naval vessels became a major focus.

In 1947, Vickers took a majority shareholding in the company that held the lease for the dockyard and would operate it in various corporate configurations into the 1980s. A new wharf allowed submarine refits to become part of the island’s work. There was even a peak in refits in association with the Vietnam War (in which Australia was an active participant).

However, by the 1960s commercial work was in decline and naval work was opened up to competition; several major contracts were won by competitors and things began to look bleak. The machinery was by this time well out-of-date and would have required expensive replacement if the facility were to have had a long-term future. The last ship to be built on the island was HMAS Success, launched in 1984, and the final submarine to be refitted was HMAS Orion in 1991. After 134 years of varied and profound history, things had finally caught up with Cockatoo Island shipyard, and it closed at the end of that year.

Historical significance

To someone who worked there in its prime, or who had suffered incarceration on the island, the many surviving buildings must seem eerily quiet and empty; large workshops, slipways, wharves and some machinery survive – allowing visitors, with a little imagination, to picture what the place would have been like in those hectic, busy years – but many buildings and most of the machinery has gone. Worst of all, the craftsmen, the apprentices, the lifetimes of skills and comradeship, the human vitality are no more than ghosts.

Nonetheless, it’s easy to see why Cockatoo Island remains so significant, and these days it appears on Australia’s ‘National Heritage List’, housing the nation’s most extensive and varied record of shipbuilding.

The preservation of the place truly began in 1995 by the Friends of Cockatoo Island, which led to the establishment of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. The fact that this place remains so special owes much to those formative years and the passionate work that’s been done ever since.

By 2000, Cockatoo Island was derelict and inaccessible to the general public. As part of the important story of First Nations rights becoming more prominent, it became the scene of a protest and land claim – aligned to major campaigns then taking placing in Canberra. An Aboriginal rights group rowed to the island, claimed the land and established a camp, before embarking on legal action in the NSW Supreme Court. Although the claims were ultimately rejected, there is an enduring respect for the indigenous history of the place and remaining evidence of the camp is now officially marked. Alongside the remnants of the penal colony and the industrial structures, this chapter represents in microcosm important aspects of Australian history and the challenges that remain to this day.

The Harbour Trust began work in 2001 to rehabilitate Cockatoo Island (and various other former defence sites on Sydney Harbour), leading to a public opening in 2007. For the first time, we could all board a ferry in the glamorous parts of the city and travel to this historic, gritty place. As everyday life carries on all around, and modern yachts sail past, you can stroll around the island with a freedom the old convicts would have envied, and try to picture their lives, or those of the generations of dockyard workers who once worked here. Much of the detail of those periods may have gone, but so much survives that it really doesn’t take a vivid imagination to take yourself back a century or more.

Crane sanctuary

Remarkably, the island still plays host to 17 cranes and a range of historic buildings that comprise the Ship Design and Industrial Precincts. Alongside the north side of Fitzroy Dock can be seen the Mort’s Dock Steam Crane, built in 1891 just across the water in Balmain. This wonderful crane (pictured on the next page) is fixed in position and has just been returned to steam.

Next to it, occupying a short section of usable track, can be found a travelling steam crane, built at Priestman’s of Hull some time between 1885 and 1890. This crane was recently returned to steam for the first time since the 1980s. On the other side of the dock is a near-identical travelling steam crane, also in steamable condition and situated on a section of usable track. This example is fitted with platework for the wartime blackout. In addition to the activities you’d expect of shipyard cranes, these travelling cranes were also used to tow ships into dock.

Dotted around the island are numerous other cranes, varying widely in size and vintage. Now, we must acknowledge one of the strangest facts about the Cockatoo Island cranes. Although the rails are quite extensive, and once covered a large area of the island, they are not all built to the same track gauge. It is not even possible to put the cranes from one side of Fitzroy Dock onto the rails on the opposite side. No one quite seems sure how this came to be.

It has been suggested that it is because some cranes started their lives elsewhere and were moved to Cockatoo Island, so rails were simply laid to suit them. Others believe that it is merely a piecemeal arrangement; nobody ever expected cranes to need to move across different parts of the island, as they were made for a specific purpose, so the lines were perhaps built to fit the confines of each location (and some of the running sections have extremely tight clearances). A definitive answer has proven elusive, but it’s quite an odd state of affairs!

But there is one part of the island where craftsmanship and engineering endeavour continue to this day. In the industrial precinct is a workshop in which a fascinating assortment of projects are under way. If you’d visited the island on November 7 2023, you’d have found an unassuming but immensely capable gentleman called Ian Macdonald (Restoration Volunteer Supervisor). On that day, as on so many others, he was working with a dedicated team of very practical people to put the finishing touches to one of the Priestman travelling steam cranes in readiness for its steam test. Last-minute problems were tweaked and repaired with a quick weld. Imperial bolts which they had fashioned by hand (you can’t buy them anymore!) were tightened. Skills that depend on decades of practical work and keen eyes were used to carry out final fettling. Coal is roped up by hand a few metres to the firebox, and water is entering the vertical boiler at long last. Amazingly, that boiler doesn’t originate from this crane but was found in a yard in Narrabri and brought down to enable this crane to be restored. You can still see the one that was removed from the crane sitting in a nearby corner, surrounded by firewood and kindling.

Hive of preservation

In the background, we see a host of other practical jobs under way, including the restoration of a boat that will soon operate on the harbour once again. What’s going on here might be on a much smaller scale than the island’s former work – and depends much more on a passionate style of ‘cottage industry’ – but it’s clearly very much in the tradition of Cockatoo Island and is incredibly impressive.

After several hours of patient, anxious endeavours, the steam test was passed and those smiling faces revealed the kind of satisfaction that can only come from years of quiet, determined work. Steaming days are not frequent here, but when they happen the fruits of the team’s labour are there for all to see. It is hard to believe that on a recent open day, three steam cranes were in operation, moving around demonstration loads to the delight of throngs of visitors. As with so many steam preservation schemes the world over, we must thank the efforts of this dedicated group of skilled, unassuming people for what we can all just turn up to and enjoy.

If you find yourself in Sydney, a visit to Cockatoo Island highly recommended. Ideally, seek out one of those occasional steaming days. Come with plenty of time, wander about, enjoy one of the cafés here, take part in some of the cultural events or even stay the night! You can choose between camping or taking up accommodation in one of the historic buildings… And all around, the modern city looks on, hardly even noticing.

Oh, and can a visitor to the island expect to see flocks of cockatoos? It’s unlikely. The name harks back to the time centuries ago, when Wareamah was covered in red gumtrees and sulphur-crested cockatoos were plentiful. These days, you’re more likely to be set upon by seagulls, which nest here and seem to believe the whole place is theirs.

Ian Macdonald

My sincere thanks to Ian Macdonald, Andrew Moran, Michael Ring, Jeffrey Thompson, Owen Currie, Joseph Yui, Stephen Buck and Lily Pai (of the Harbour Trust) who were all extremely helpful in the preparation of this article.