Tim Lloyd: Shed 26 should be saved and used for the SA Maritime Museum

The preservation of Port Adelaide’s Shed 26 is a way of delivering a proper, waterside, version of the SA Maritime Museum, writes Tim Lloyd.

Shed 26 at Port Adelaide. Picture: Tony Kearney

The preservation of Port Adelaide’s Shed 26 is a way of delivering a proper, waterside, version of the SA Maritime Museum.

At present the museum is landlocked, in an old bond store on Lipson St in the Port, and the watercraft operated by the museum are hundreds of metres away on the Port’s inner harbour. If the museum moved to Shed 26 a whole lot of history and heritage could be unlocked in a new, much bigger venue, right on the river.

This year’s History Festival, running from April 27 through May, is an ideal opportunity for the State Government to put that vision into motion.

Shed 26 is part of the Cedar Woods residential development site on the north side of Port Adelaide’s inner harbour. It is due for demolition.

But the fate of the last surviving sawtooth dockside shed on the river, part of the historic Fletcher’s Slip site, has been hotly contested by heritage and design groups, attracting more submissions than any other heritage decision.

The impending heritage listing of Shed 26 by the SA Heritage Council later this week has led Environment Minister David Speirs to announce he will consider using his powers to overrule the listing.

Fletcher’s Slip is the last piece of heritage fabric of the old working port left on the 5ha Cedar Woods site. The site was bought last year for the princely sum of $2. The Perth-based company has said it will reuse heritage-listed elements but has rejected keeping Shed 26, which dates from the 1950s.

Aside from its heritage value the shed has the potential to solve a range of pressing issues for heritage, culture and commerce in Port Adelaide.

Equivalent maritime museums in Hobart and Fremantle and the National Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney all have wharf side addresses.

The SA Maritime Museum displays a scale model of the ketch Active II in its small building while the actual full size Annie Watt, one of Australia’s oldest surviving ketches, is sitting unloved in storage.

It is a tragedy the jewel in the museum’s crown, due to turn 150 next year, and one of four such ketches in Australia, can’t be shown. Other vessels, such as the Nelcebee, the only 19th century steamship in Australia, are also in storage.

Shed 26 offers a place where the Maritime Museum could display more of its huge collection including these full scale exhibits.

With Fletcher’s Slip wharf, visitors to Shed 26 would be able to walk out of the museum and on to the working ships, vastly increasing the experience. The site also offers the prospect of a long-term home for clipper, the City of Adelaide, and would give focus to restoration efforts for all these ships.

Given the scale of the shed and wharves, it would become a nucleus and attraction in the Cedar Woods development.