Clipper ship City of Adelaide still waiting for permanent dock at Port Adelaide after returning from Scotland in 2014
SHE came back in 2014 but clipper ship City of Adelaide remains adrift in a bureaucratic sea as her crew waits for a port to call home.
AS passionate volunteers put hundreds of hours into her restoration and thousands of people flock to see her, the clipper ship City of Adelaide is adrift in a bureaucratic sea as her crew waits for a port to call home.
The historic sailing vessel, which as a fast passenger ship played a major part in populating the then British colony of South Australia in the 19th century, could ironically become a victim of the drive to repopulate Port Adelaide, as potential permanent moorings appear earmarked for residential development.
The ship has sat on a barge in “temporary” accommodation at Port Adelaide’s Dock 1 for almost three years since her extraordinary rescue from Scottish mud and a final voyage halfway around the world to become a maritime museum. The State Government’s commitment to provide a permanent site for the largely privately funded project, meanwhile, remains unfulfilled.
Project director Peter Christopher says that, as the Government prepares to nominate a preferred site, there is growing concern the ship will be shunted to a site effectively hidden form the people who want to see it.
“From the discussions we’ve had, it’s fairly clear that, while decisions haven’t been formally made, the least valuable piece of land for the Government is Dock 2 two and that’s likely to be the site they’d want to give,” he told the Sunday Mail, .
“If it turns out that is the site they want to allocate, there would have to be some pretty major changes made to the access provisions, because at the moment Dock 2 is very inaccessible.”
Mooted sites have included Fletcher’s Slip and Dock 1, but these are no longer available as Government agency Renewal SA seeks to make waterside land available for mixed-use development. Cruikshank’s Corner, Hart’s Mill and Dock 2 remain the only other possible sites.
“If they were to give us Hart’s Mill, that’s reasonably accessible directly off the road (and) if it was Cruikshank’s Corner, once again that could be driven right up to from the Port,” Christopher said.
“If it was to be Dock 2, however, there would have to be a bridge of some sort put across Dock 1 to give access to Dock 2, or alternatively some road access from the eastern end, which currently isn’t there.”
As the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, as well as Housing and Urban Development, Stephen Mullighan is considering Renewal SA recommendations for a preferred site. These have not yet been released, but the minister’s office yesterday confirmed that Dock 2 was the most likely site and that access issues would be considered in later planning.
The restoration team, meanwhile, is already operating the ship as a tourist attraction as it continues to raise funds.
“We’ve had in excess of 8000 people on conducted, paid tours throughout the ship. An estimated 200,000 have come and viewed the ship from the dock,” Mr Christopher said.
“We’ve stabilised the mid deck and carried out repairs that took nearly a year. What that now means is that we can take tours right through the ship on that mid deck.
“The current major project is up in the saloon deck, where the first-class cabins were. We believe we can have that saloon deck operational, restored within 12 months.”
“It’s like a Russian icebreaker. It’s pretty solid. A lot of the work going on at the moment is tightening up loose things, rather than having to repair things.”
Almost a quarter of a million Australians can trace their ancestry through passengers and crew of the City of Adelaide, which between 1864 and 1887 made 23 annual return voyages from London and Plymouth to Adelaide.
She later hauled timber to the UK from North America and was used as a coal ship, before being moored as an isolation hospital and then a naval training base. Eventually she was effectively abandoned to a muddy grave on the River Clyde in Scotland, before historians in that country and SA began work on a rescue project more than a decade ago.
In late 2013, she was placed on a purpose-built steel cradle and mounted on a cargo ship that arrived in Adelaide the following February.
The restoration team is looking for more volunteers. Go to the ship’s official website here for details.