{"id":1644,"date":"2016-10-07T10:30:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T00:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=1644"},"modified":"2016-10-10T11:04:56","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T00:34:56","slug":"jetties-eyre-peninsula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2016\/10\/jetties-eyre-peninsula\/","title":{"rendered":"Jetties in the Eyre Peninsula"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wild weather last week was\u00a0nothing more for many of us than an excuse to play cards by candlelight for a few hours. For some people, especially on the Eyre Peninsula, the storms were much more destructive. After seeing pictures of the battered Port Germein jetty on the news, we’ve been thinking about Jill Roe’s memories of the area from\u00a0<\/em>Our Fathers Cleared the Bush<\/a> \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jetties have played an important role in the history of Eyre\u00a0Peninsula. Between the 1860s and the 1920s, some 39 jetties were built\u00a0along the Peninsula\u2019s estimated 3200 kilometres of coastline, from as\u00a0far west as Fowlers Bay to Port Pirie on the eastern side of Spencer Gulf\u00a0and on nearby islands. This may not sound a lot, but, as will be evident\u00a0from a glance at a map of the peninsula, by the early 20th century\u00a0the region was well served by coastal shipping \u2013 mainly ketches and\u00a0schooners \u2013 and it should be remembered that some stretches of the\u00a0coastline, especially the majestic limestone cliff faces of the west\u00a0coast but also some of the sandy eastern bays, were not suited to jetty\u00a0building, or necessitated the building of very long jetties, as at Port\u00a0Germein \u2013 until recently the longest jetty in South Australia.\u00a0<\/span>A telling\u00a0instance of how tricky the approaches could be is the early pastoral\u00a0port of Elliston, halfway up the west coast, where it was sometimes\u00a0impossible for ships carrying essential supplies to enter Waterloo\u00a0Bay, with its narrow entrance and uncertain tides. The misery that\u00a0attended the turning back of ships is only too easily imagined.<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a><\/p>\n

Many older residents of Eyre Peninsula can recall when the arrival\u00a0of \u2018the boat\u2019 was a main event of the week. At Tumby Bay, where I watched it most frequently, you had to be there at the right moment to\u00a0see it come in. This meant on a Tuesday at about 2 pm, and thus for me\u00a0in the early 1950s, during school holidays. There I\u2019d be on the beach,\u00a0with the small east-coast township at my back, squinting towards\u00a0Port Lincoln, past the estuary of a mangrove-fringed creek and a then\u00a0uninhabited rocky headland, hoping to see the Adelaide Steamship\u00a0Company\u2019s MV Morialta<\/em> appear on the horizon and watch it berth at\u00a0the town\u2019s main jetty. There was something exciting about the way it\u00a0suddenly bore down on you, and the Scottish-built ship had a certain\u00a0style, due in part to a painted funnel.<\/p>\n

\n

There were always people on the jetty to welcome the Morialta<\/em>,\u00a0in addition to the wharfies busy loading and unloading cargo. Indeed,\u00a0on most days you would find people scattered along the jetty, fishing,\u00a0chatting, and otherwise relaxing. For them, as for many people living\u00a0on Eyre Peninsula, jetties had become an integral part of life by the\u00a01950s. The regular arrival of shipping at the small ports along the coast\u00a0provided a focal point for town and country folk alike.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There were two jetties at Tumby Bay at that time. The older,\u00a0shorter one, which was finally demolished in the 1990s, dated back to\u00a0the 1870s, when it was built to serve various mining ventures in the\u00a0hills to the west of the town, and it was still being used a century later\u00a0for recreation and shade on hot days. It even had a diving board. The\u00a0main jetty, a longer and stronger construct a few hundred metres to the\u00a0south, dates from the early 1900s and thankfully still survives. Only\u00a0just, however. In 1972 the body responsible for the state\u2019s jetties decided\u00a0that Tumby\u2019s days as a port were over and, with costly maintenance\u00a0needed on one section of the jetty, prepared to demolish it. When work\u00a0was about to begin, appalled residents formed a picket line at the town end of the jetty, and the demolition was called off. Since then, with\u00a0extra funding from local sources, the jetty has been strengthened and\u00a0is as popular as ever. It features in all the town\u2019s advertising, and is part\u00a0of its not inconsiderable tourist appeal.<\/p>\n

It is no wonder jetties were popular. They enlivened many small\u00a0coastal settlements and, with many parts of the wheat-growing areas\u00a0far from the coast, were a godsend to farmers. Prior to the building\u00a0of jetties, farmers had had to get their grain harvest to the beaches by\u00a0horse and cart, load it onto small boats and row the boats out to deeper\u00a0water to be re-loaded onto the waiting ketches \u2013 when they turned up,\u00a0that is. Even after the coming of rail, it was still cheaper in some places\u00a0to use what was called the \u2018mosquito fleet\u2019 in the 1930s. (As a student at\u00a0the University of Adelaide in the mid-1930s, the historian Russel Ward\u00a0once worked on \u2018the mosquito fleet\u2019 during the long vacation.) With\u00a0the jetties in place, produce could be brought to storage sheds at the base\u00a0of the jetty, sent on trolleys up the jetties and loaded straight into holds.<\/p>\n

\"Windjammers<\/a><\/p>\n

By now, however, the future of these historic constructs is far from\u00a0secure because, as the story of the Tumby jetty may suggest, they are\u00a0costly to maintain. In an attractive publication entitled Jetties of South\u00a0Australia: Past and present<\/em> published in 2005, compiler Neville Collins\u00a0warns that, while major bulk-handling ports such as Port Lincoln and\u00a0Thevenard are flourishing, as maybe some recreational sites are also,\u00a0the smaller jetties are under threat. Indeed, some have already gone,\u00a0such as the jetty at the historic port of Lipson near Tumby, which was\u00a0demolished as early as 1935. Collins does not spell it out, but it seems\u00a0clear from his outline that the economic underpinning is slipping\u00a0away and that there will need to be strong community support and a\u00a0profitable tourist industry to sustain them.<\/p>\n

It must have been some subliminal awareness of this situation\u00a0that caused me to decide, on a journey back to the Peninsula in January\u00a02007 as a preliminary to this project, that I would walk the surviving\u00a0jetties. And, with a couple of regrettable omissions \u2013 of the tiny village\u00a0of Haslam on Anxious Bay, south of Ceduna, of which I was unaware\u00a0at the time, and Port Neill, north of Tumby Bay, where I missed the\u00a0turnoff \u2013 I more or less did just that: from Fowlers Bay, baking in the\u00a0hot sun way out west, to as far as the fish nets piled up on the Cowell\u00a0jetty at Franklin Harbour, halfway up Spencer Gulf. Admittedly I\u00a0was not brave enough to walk the entire length of the narrow jetty at\u00a0Elliston on a chilly Sunday morning by myself, and it seemed enough\u00a0at the time to find that the now somewhat shortened jetty at the lovely\u00a0but solitary Louth Bay was still there, but overall it was an enriching\u00a0experience, and one to be recommended to visitors.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was on one of the jetties fronting Spencer Gulf that I\u00a0was reminded of the once-ubiquitous advertising slogan, accompanied\u00a0by the ringing of ships\u2019 bells, \u2018It\u2019s time YOU went on the Gulf Trip\u2019.\u00a0Introduced before World War I by one of the three shipping companies\u00a0then competing for the coastal trade, the Gulf Trip became a standby\u00a0of the Adelaide Steamship Company, which had gained a monopoly\u00a0on the coastal trade by 1915, and proved popular in the interwar years.\u00a0There were two main variants on offer: a short trip from Port Adelaide\u00a0to Port Lincoln with a brief stay there (three to four days), and a longer\u00a0trip from Port Adelaide to Port Augusta with calls at Port Lincoln,\u00a0Cowell, Whyalla, Port Pirie and the old copper port of Wallaroo (six\u00a0days).\u00a0<\/span>Travel up the west coast was never such an enticing prospect,\u00a0with long stretches of towering cliffs and some dangerous bays along\u00a0the way. The most worrisome was surely Elliston, where bad weather and rough seas meant shipwrecks sometimes occurred. Safer harbours\u00a0further west, at Ceduna in Denial Bay for instance, made things\u00a0easier, but these remote and not especially productive parts had their\u00a0own problems. There was even an occasional mishap in the normally\u00a0placid waters off Tumby Bay, and the waters near \u2018the Althorpes\u2019\u00a0between Kangaroo Island and the western tip of Yorke Peninsula had\u00a0a reputation for roughness.<\/p>\n

It may sound as if the maritime history of Eyre Peninsula is an\u00a0uncertain story, for all its variety and interest. It was undoubtedly\u00a0rough-and-ready at times, and it is true that its most colourful\u00a0aspect \u2013 the great grain races that saw mighty sailing ships arrive\u00a0in Spencer Gulf from Europe until as late as 1949 \u2013 was already\u00a0becoming a thing of the past by the onset of World War II.\u00a0<\/span>But local\u00a0and coastal shipping still seemed sound after the war, with several\u00a0larger passenger\/cargo ships in operation in the 1950s. MV Moonta<\/em>,\u00a0built in Denmark in 1931, lasted until 1955, when its cargo side became\u00a0unprofitable and it was sold off; it had offered six-day trips from Port\u00a0Adelaide to Port Augusta and back which took in Kangaroo Island.\u00a0It ended up being used as a casino on a beach on the South Coast\u00a0of France. The Morialta<\/em>, purpose-built pre-war but not brought into\u00a0service until after World War II, lasted only a year longer, until 1956;\u00a0a comfortable ship, it was advertising cruises to the smaller ports of\u00a0the lower Gulf, from Adelaide to Cowell and back via Tumby Bay, Port\u00a0Neill and Arno Bay in 1950. Three years later, in 1960, the queen of\u00a0them all, the MV Minnipa<\/em> \u2013 another Danish-built ship which began its\u00a033-year service to Eyre Peninsula in 1927 \u2013 was finally withdrawn from\u00a0service, due to a decline in patronage. With that, the coastal shipping\u00a0that dated back to 1839 seemed to come to an end.<\/p>\n

Read more from\u00a0<\/em>Our Fathers Cleared the Bush by purchasing the book here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wild weather last week was\u00a0nothing more for many of us than an excuse to play cards by candlelight for a few hours. For some people, especially on the Eyre Peninsula, the storms were much more destructive. After seeing pictures … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[502,501,16,500,498,499,503,506,404,505,504],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extract","tag-eyre-peninsula","tag-historian","tag-history","tag-jetties","tag-jill-roe","tag-our-fathers-cleared-the-bush","tag-port-germein","tag-shipping","tag-south-australia","tag-spencer-gulf","tag-tumby-bay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-qw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1649,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644\/revisions\/1649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}