SOMETHING always survives.
I think of this phrase almost every time I travel over the sweeping arch of the Stockton bridge heading towards Port Stephens.
For way down below the bridge, to the immediate north, lie the hidden remains of a once historic Newcastle port vessel. Locked in the middle of a Kooragang pond and virtually inaccessible is what's left of the port's famous pilot steamer, the SS Ajax.
Its mere presence today hints at what else has managed, somehow, to survive despite the odds, including other ships once deliberately buried inside the port. Even more might still lie hidden.
Meanwhile, the Ajax has been ravaged by time with its upper deck, wheelhouse and most of its hull missing. Only the stem and stern are visible, with mangroves sprouting out of the middle.
While now physically unrecognisable, the Ajax took part in many rescues, including one spectacular incident, involving saving the lives on those aboard an American schooner amid wild seas off the coast back in September 1909. The vessel was the 'Alpena' and US President Taft was so grateful for the rescue of the Americans that he awarded gold medals to the Ajax's crew.
Named after a Greek warrior experienced in ocean voyages, the SS Ajax had a long career spanning 53 years. For a start, it wasn't always a pilot vessel, actually far from it. Launched in 1874 at Sydney's Balmain, it was one of NSW's largest government-owned tugs.
For 23 years the Ajax towed punts with mud dredged from the harbour out to sea for dumping. In its first nine years of service alone (up to 1882) it was credited with carrying 400,000 tons of mud/Hunter River silt out to sea.
Then it was announced that the old, now drab-looking government tug Ajax would be converted into a pilot steamer for Newcastle. After about a year away being converted for a new life, Ajax was back in Newcastle Harbour completely transformed in late 1897. The former tug now sported a yacht-like hull painted black with a broad white band and had an extra deck. The new Ajax became invaluable in the port, being labelled as "the maid of all work".
But finally, the 128ft iron-screw steamer, after many hard years of service involving pilot duties, mercy missions and hundreds of rescues of small craft and sea searches, was declared obsolete.
The replacement was the 427-ton SS Birubi, an Aboriginal word for Southern Cross. Built at the then Walsh Island shipyard in 1927, the Birubi's career wasn't as hectic as the Ajax, but it faithfully served the port 24 hours a day for decades.
The trim little steel steamer measuring 130ft long made its mark in other ways. Birubi Beach/Point along the coast to the north carries the name today. Also a reminder of past days was the 'Birubi Shoal' off Dyke End over which the vessel moored during many years of service.
With a crew of 13 and a speed of about nine knots, the Birubi was a familiar sight around the port for 32 years.
During World War II, the Birubi also played a dual role in the port serving as a naval examination vessel. Being wartime, the boat even carried a small gun.
But as the years rolled by, the shadow of the shipbreaker's yard hung over the pilot vessel. The axe fell on August 6, 1959, when the Birubi was paid off and replaced by a new type of pilot ship, the 66ft long, diesel-engine powered wooden cutter, the Girralong.
But the Birubi ship bell was kept for posterity at the Newcastle Pilot Station. Rather surprisingly, the Birubi's foremast has also outlasted the sturdy old pilot vessel. When last heard of, it was still proudly flying signal flags, not in Newcastle, but in the grounds of the Royal Motor Yacht Club at Newport, in Broken Bay.
Other ships long thought lost, however, have a habit of making their presence felt. In mid-2007, shocked workers digging foundations for a new building in central Honeysuckle, near the waterfront, exposed the rusted hull of a steel boat 136 years old.
Subsequent investigations revealed that hidden in the sand was most likely the iron hull of the paddle wheeler 'Leo', built in Bristol, England, in 1871.
It came to Newcastle in 1876 for use as a tug. It was bought by BHP about 1915, but taken out of service in 1917. Soon stripped to the hull, it was buried in the area to help reclaim shallow harbour flats around the old Bullock Island bridge (today's Worth Place). Here, more stable land was needed for eastward railway expansion.
The discovery shouldn't have really come as a total surprise. Decades ago, I was contacted by Jim Latham, then 79, of Mayfield, who spoke about the low-lying swamp reclaimed for the Newcastle's new steelworks by BHP from 1913 by using old copper slag heaps and sand pumped ashore.
But according to Jim, a ship was also later buried there which, if ever found, might excite archaeologists. Jim said the vessel was dumped about 100 metres in from the Steelworks Channel in what was left of Throsby Creek's amazingly wide, but now forgotten, north channel (see map).
The creek was closed off near Elizabeth and William streets, North Carrington, and reclaimed, mainly for railway lines, before 1910.
The ship was a small, steel hulk of about 150 tons cut to the waterline, possibly in 1917, then almost buried in sand. "It was used as a ground tank to store creosote and tar products," Jim said.
Shipping expert Cliff Callen, president of the Shiplovers Society, then said he could identify the buried vessel.
"It sounds like the 'Electra', a twin-screw steamer of 395 tons and 160ft long,' Cliff, of Stockton, said.
"My father put it ashore, just floated it in, in 1930, from memory when it was still a complete hull."
Soon after, long-time Stockton identity and local historian Vera Deacon revealed a hidden link with the notorious outlaw Jimmy Governor and the steamer Electra.
Governor was finally captured near Wingham after a 14-week hunt. In November 1900, the steamer Electra transported him to Sydney in leg irons and handcuffs to be hanged.
Governor and others were wanted for a series of horrific murders. An Aussie film, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, was later made about the tragedy.
The Electra was probably the most popular vessel on the Manning River/North Coast run in the late 1890s. Electra Parade at Harrington, near Crowdy Head, is named after the iconic steamer.
But Cliff Callen did even more research to later declare there were two, not one, sizeable ships used as storage hulks by BHP on site in the steel industry's very early days.
Electra was one, the other was the 290ft Union Co passenger steamer 'Wakatipu'. Cliff said the tug Carbine pushed the ship into a pond up there for use as an oil storage hulk.
Later it capsized and was cut up.
Life's strange, isn't it?
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