Bart Bear's Blog

This crane is on Cockatoo Island in Sydney harbour. Cockatoo Island was picked as a convict prison in 1839 and a lot of the buildings and the dockyard that the convicts built have been preserved and are on the World Heritage List. From 1847 onward the docks were busy repairing Royal Navy ships, and shipbuilding started there in 1870. In 1913 it became the dockyard for the Royal Australian Navy. It was at its busiest during World War 2, repairing damaged Allied ships, building new warships up to destroyer size, and refitting merchant ships for troop and supply carriers. The first "Queen Mary" was converted to a troopship here. Cockatoo Island was the major shipyard in Australia until 1992, when the dockyards closed, most of the machinery was sold and lots of the workshops and wharves were demolished. Today, the island is managed by the Sydney Harbour Trust. You can visit it by ferry and spend many fascinating hours examining the remaining docks, workshops and machinery. Lots of the machinery is slowly rusting away, but some, like this small crane, has been restored. If Scruffy and I could have figured out how to get it running we would have had a great time using it to pick up some of the big chunks of machines that are scattered around the island. If you have any interest in industrial history then make sure that you visit Cockatoo Island when you are in Sydney.

Labels: New South Wales, Sydney