The long history of keeping Newcastle Harbour deep enough for traffic

For it's a never-ending struggle to keep the harbour open to commercial shipping as befits the present title of world's largest coal export port. We should never take anything for granted, especially after floods when Hunter River silt and debris can reduce depths drastically.

Ongoing dredging programs and port deepening to maintain a modern safe harbour are vital, especially for those with long memories. Dredging before 1966 deepened the port to 36ft (11 metres) allowing longer ships to visit for cargoes.

During the 1970s, plans were then drawn up to further deepen the harbour to 50ft (15 metres) to permit even longer ships (up to 305 metres) to enter and leave without hassles.

Former Newcastle Harbour master Ken Hopper later recalled this meant the number of ship groundings in the port falling dramatically from eight vessels in 1966 to only one major one seven years later.

Keeping fully on top of the situation is an old, old story. The Newcastle Herald reported way back in October 1901 - in the sailing ship era - that if a vessel strayed off the port navigation leads, she might "smell the bottom" and veer onto the dreaded graveyard of ships called the Oyster Bank. Here, the rusting bones of the French barque Adolphe (from 1904) still lie as Stockton tourist landmark, a reminder of the port's dangers.

With a slight sea on the harbour bar, a heavily laden coal ship could once have her bow caught in a trough of a wave and touch bottom.

Newcastle maritime historian, the late Terry Callen, in his 1994 book Bar Safe wrote that in anticipation of ships entering port for bigger coal cargoes, the state government let a contract to Westham Dredging Company Pty Ltd in 1977 to deepen the bar and some harbour channels to 15.2 metres.

The contract, worth nearly $100 million, was reported as the largest of its type awarded in Australia at that time. Callen discovered the program included the removal of 9.5 million cubic metres of soft mud from the harbour plus about 2.5 million cubic metres of rock from the bar and in an area just outside the heads the sand also was to be dredged to a depth of 17.7 metres.

The scheme took until 1983 to achieve the target 15.2 metre depth. This was nearly double the port's 1931 depths. The spoil was dumped two kilometres out to sea.

A little earlier, in 1963, the Honolulu firm of Haunstrop Pomeroy had gotten the ball rolling to ensure the port remained viable. It was awarded a $3.8 million contract to deepen the port depth to 30ft (9.1 metres) at low water within two years. This included removal of a staggering 1.4 million tons of rock.

Historian Terry Callen wrote that the company's cutter suction dredge W.H.Dillingham then found problems disposing of the spoil. This was partly rectified by building a retaining wall at Stockton some distance out from the existing shoreline. This extended from Stockton's old vehicular ferry wharf (now an extension of Punt Road into harbour waters) to Pirate Point, near the port entrance.

Callen said that this huge pond was then filled with stone and silt in a matter of weeks. This is now the broad foreshore park east of the present passenger ferry terminal.

Vast amounts of more sand was soon also pumped in another area between Pirate Point's Lion Park and the start of the Stockton breakwater creating mounds of sand the local residents promptly labelled as "Mount Dillingham". Now grassed over, you'd might never guess the origin of this second modern parkland near the Stockton swimming pool.

More stockpiled harbour spoil was later used to fill in the approach to the Stockton Bridge. Of course, all of this was nothing new. The whole of Stockton's western foreshore was also man-made, created by fleets of 19th century sailing ships moored there, dumping their ballast over the side while awaiting coal cargoes.

For example, during the 1890s California was our best foreign customer for coal. In nine weeks in mid-1891 alone 51 large vessels sailed from Newcastle for California.

Speaking of man-made features of today's Newcastle Harbour, the waterfront suburb of Carrington was once an island, hosting bullock herds grazing there to fatten up before a trip to the butcher. Here, moored ships also tipping their stone ballast over the side created a new coal-loading foreshore (see map) down to Dyke Point.

Other major man-made changes, besides building our two mighty ocean entrance breakwaters, included the complete removal of the original spur of Honeysuckle Point and the nearby landmark, nine-span Carrington/Bullock Island bridge (1900-1912). This measured 308ft (93.3 metres) in length. It was demolished to create the present Basin area (see picture) with a new, deeper channel dredged there instead.

All the changes for Newcastle Harbour then over time are a far cry from the experience of Novocastrians back, say, 135 years ago, starting in 1888. Take the comments in the late 1930s of recently retired Huddart Parker shipping manager Mr C.B. Greaves as he reminisced about the past.

After spending 50 years on the Newcastle waterfront, he told former colleagues of the surprising changes he'd experienced over decades.

Greaves especially remembered the giant horseshoe-shaped sandbank which once existed opposite the city's Market Street. Here, the port's watermen (rowboat taxi operators) would clean their boats on the big sand shoal.

A major obstacle to progress was the old Bullock Island bridge "which crossed the water a little to the east of Union Street" (today's Worth Place).

Then there were the stirring days during the 1890 maritime strike "when 126 sailing ships in rows of three and four deep" were delayed, tied up in port against their wishes.

Greaves said it was also an era where sailing ships brought cargoes of bananas and coconuts from Fiji and unloaded them at (the original) Queen's, then later King's, wharf.

Greaves also reminded his 1930s audience of the once flourishing trade in wool exports from Port Hunter. And of how famous wind-driven wool clippers like the Cutty Sark frequently visited the port, then made very fast passages back home to England in between 72 and 76 days.

He also pressed for the deepening of the harbour, more wharfage and better coal-loading facilities, adding that the port had for too long "been severely handicapped through having no local control".