Ardrossan locals need to fire up and realise jetty could die

Ardrossan local and councillor Richard Carruthers says residents have to wake up and realise just how much danger one of their biggest assets is in.

Richard Carruthers wants to make his community angry. He wants to fire them up. He is worried they are oblivious to the threat posed to Ardrossan and the future of its jetty.

“I’ve been trying to get through to the people in our town that they need to be upset that this (jetty) could close,’’ Mr Carruthers said.

“People are bloody complacent. They really are complacent. (They say) ‘it wouldn’t happen in a million years’.

“It’s a great town, a great community and I’m just trying to get people to be angry enough to write letters to the editor all the time.’’

Mr Carruthers is an Ardrossan local, as well as a member of the Yorke Peninsula Council. He has lived in the town for 15 years, after decades of bringing his family here on holiday and is worried about its future.

The Ardrossan Hospital closed its doors earlier this month, and is operating now only as an aged care home, and now he is worried that the town’s fishing jetty could also be headed for extinction.

“So fingers crossed, that something happens to the positive because, dear oh dear, take the hospital and the jetty out of this place, people won’t want to come here,’’ he said.

The councillor stressed the jetty is still safe to walk on, but he also said the situation is moving towards the critical.

He said it needed immediate work that would cost $3.5 million, among estimates that a total renovation would require at least $20 million.

The repair bill is a problem when the state government has offered $3.5 million to the Yorke Peninsula Council to help it maintain the region’s 12 jetties, which it leases from the state government.

YP councillor Richard Caruthers. Picture: Brett Hartwig

Ardrossan is regarded as the jetty most in need of help. but there are others including Edithburgh and the wharf at Port Vincent where locals also say urgent work is needed.

The Ardrossan jetty was built in 1878 and Mr Carruthers said while maintenance work had been carried out over the years, there were originals pylons and cross-members still in place.

“If you walked under there at low tide there are great signs of deterioration,’’ he said.

Mr Carruthers said the recent Easter holiday showed how important the jetty was to the local economy.

He said there were 150 people on the jetty at any one time over the weekend catching fish, squid and crabs.

“You couldn’t get a park in the streets, Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, it was just incredible,’’ he said.

“The amount of people that come here and we can’t afford to lose them.’’

Another half an hour down the coast, Port Vincent locals feel the same about their wharf. The under-threat structures in Port Vincent are different to Ardrossan and Edithburgh. While the town has a small fisherman’s jetty that the state government has pledged $197,000 to help fix, the wharf is the big attraction in Port Vincent. That jetty currently has a ‘closed’ sign hanging from it.

The wharf is 120 years old and replaced a jetty that was built in 1877. Grain was exported from the wharf, which was 140m longer than its current dimension until that part was demolished in the 1960s. Once fisher still uses the wharf to unload his catch, something which the Yorke Peninsula Council is trying to stop.

“The Port Vincent wharf was designed to be built and used,’’ Port Vincent Progress Association spokesman Peter Lehman said. “Without that wharf, Port Vincent not only loses part of its heritage but an essential part of its character.

“As well as recreational fishing and tourism, local and visiting kids love to ‘bommie’ (jump) off it as a coming-of-age ritual.’’

Port Vincent Progress association spokesman Peter Lehman. Picture: Brett Hartwig

The wharf has had some remediation, with 10 steel pilings inserted at a cost of $17,000 each but Mr Lehman said it’s been difficult to find out what a total cost would be to ensure its future.

He also said the community was surprised the state government had diverted money to the small fisherman’s jetty as the priority should be fixing the wharf..

Up and down the Yorke Peninsula, the example of the Tumby Bay jetty on the Eyre Peninsula is cited as a warning about what could happen. People are worried that their jetties and wharves could be just as vulnerable to a big storm that could result in closure and the terrible impact that could have on their communities.

In Edithburgh, whose jetty serves as a magnet for divers from all over the state, Mick O’Connell is worried that the structure’s vulnerability could be exposed at any time.

“There’s a lot of the broken infrastructure underneath and you just don’t know whether it’ll be the next storm,’’ he said. “You see photos underneath the water and you realise the precarious nature of the jetty really and you just don’t know whether it’s this year, next year, the year after, five years. You don’t know.’’