Goolwa - Home of the Wooden Boat Festival: In the Fleurieu Peninsula region of South Australia

If you were looking for the perfect setting for an Aussie version of Wind in The Willows, then Birks’ Harbour at Goolwa would have to be it. Toad of Toad Hall would go rushing past along the tree-lined road behind in some new-fangled machine, and Ratty and Mole would be very much at home among this well-worn jetty full of adored old boats. After all, their owners are completely at one with their notion that “there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” They mean wooden boats, of course, and they are getting ready for a gathering of the clan from round the nation for the Wooden Boat Festival in Goolwa.

The calm waters of the nearby Coorong have drawn on ever swelling congregation of those who believe that the natural elements - wood and water - go together perfectly. Old Birks’ Harbour is a traditional place of worship on the freshwater side of the barrage. Presiding over it, Phil Watson also takes one of Goolwa’s most revered watercraft out for a tootle from there.

“We’re lucky enough to be the custodian’s of Hector’s old boat, the Fairy Queen. Hector was one of the great characters of the area… he was a fisherman on the Coorong, and he lived on this boat by the Goolwa Wharf for more than forty years.”

Hector would have known a trio of boats in the dock very well. Amy and Ida are spacious and charming old Coorong fishing boats, while moored between them is the terrible, which is anything but.

Originally a tender and lifeboat for the British warship, HMS Terrible, it’s used to much more peaceful pursuits today. Meanwhile, out on Hector’s boat, we learn that there are plenty of critics of its box-like-cabin and blue livery, but they stay because they are Hector’s. And so is its length.

“In the mid-50’s, he thought he’d make it a bit longer, so he cut the boat in half, added ten feet in the middle, and put it back on the river.”

Every wooden boat has a story, but the Lady Daly has one that is hard to beat. It has age on its side, because the hull moored on the riverside of the little harbour is the oldest in use on the Murray. The timbers for it were cut at Port Adelaide back in 1867. Folklore has it, that, during its days as a lifeboat at Victor Harbor, a crew rowed out in a storm and were presumed lost. They rowed back in a couple of days later. The Lady Daly (named after a Governor’s wife) first served in the Murray in the 1920’s, when a Murray Bridge marine engineer added extensive super structure to house two sleeping cabins, a galley and upper steering deck. Wooden boat devotees of Rockford Wines fame overhauled it a few years ago and it plied the river from the port of Morgan. These days, it is a grand old dame in the growing wooden boat fleet at Goolwa.

Under the sweeping and slender curve of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge, we spied the nineteenth century paddlesteamer that ate wood for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All restored and in working order, Oscar W it is a precious adornment to the wharf, which is about to enjoy a very significant anniversary. It was exactly 150 years ago that the great paddlesteamer era began at the Goolwa wharf, and the Victoria goldrush was the distant but influential driver. There were thousands of diggers to feed and South Australians sought a way to get to them, and the local economy was so drastically affected that, at last, Governor Young’s passion for a river boat trade was an idea whose time had come. Not one but two specially built paddlesteamers left here in 1853 to pave the way for Oscar W and all of its kind.

“First, flourmiller, Captain William Randell and his Mannum-built paddlesteamer, Mary Ann, enjoyed a nineteen gun salute before heading upstream, and later in the year, merchant navy Captain Cadell brought the Sydney-built Lady Augusta through the mouth, and near where Hector’s wharfside cafe sits today, a great marquee feast was held to herald his departure.”

Goolwa, the New Orleans of the South, is gaining a different fame today as home to a cherished and growing fleet of wooden boats, and at the classy end of the 400 or so there are some quite beautiful cruisers. Out for a dawdle on the broad river bend below the town, we saw a meticulously restored cruiser built in Port Adelaide in the 1950’s with its owners now living on board, while in convoy was one of several smart and small NSW - built Halvorsen craft that are regularly brought over for plying the Murray and the Coorong - and why not?

Within the Hindmarsh Island marina, there are more magnificent icons for the wooden boat worshippers. The Leo, for instance, is a long tug-like sugar cane towboat from the Clarence River in Northern NSW. The marina workboat is of similar lean lines, but it is only occasionally asked to push its weight around these days.

“This is the R.S Baker”, marina manager Andrew Chapman explained. “Roy Baker was a shipwright in the Marine and Harbour’s shipyards at Port Adelaide for many years. It was in service out of the Port, and we found her doing charter work on Kangaroo Island”. With hundreds of others, Andrew will be putting in the hours to spruce up their boats for the coming festival. “It’s a love affair that’s all about nurturing the wood rather than cutting the fibre glass. It just means you end up attached to a paint brush.”

All that love and elbow-grease comes together for the national Wooden Boat Festival every second year. There are hilarious contests, majestic encounters between the great survivors from the pasddlesteamer era, a magical twighlight marine pageant and the obligatory food and wine fair for starters. Come the festival, then, the bridge will be crammed with spectators, the wharf will be abuzz with families enjoying the events and the river will be teeming with those who engage in a timeless pursuit. After all, it was the Roman poet, Horace, who talked about people finding “happiness in boats”.

Details
South Australian Wooden Boat Festival Goolwa
14 - 16 March, 2003
Ph. (08) 8555 1955

Research thanks to:

Jullian Sheridan Queen.
Gaanakgomo Xie Li
Cultural Tourism Degree
Flinders University