Ballast Head ship berth & load facility 1954

Salt had been taken from the Eastern end of Kangaroo Island’s salt lakes since the beginning of the Island’s history, but eventually the industry declined, and the aging machinery was left to rust away where it stood. The salt had been transported to Penneshaw by a narrow gauge rail line and small trucks and loaded on to ketches for the sea journey to Adelaide. Over the years the rail line and almost all traces of the industry slowly disappeared. Then in the 1950’s, knowledge that under the seasonal layers of salt there were huge deposits of high grade gypsum, led to the detailed surveying of the deposit, and a company was formed to mine it large scale, and this led to the building of a shipping berth at the foot of Ballast Head, a large bluff sweeping steeply down to the sea on the North coast a few miles east of Kingscote.

The gypsum was transported a few miles overland by large diesel trucks, and dumped over the top of the bluff, soon becoming a huge glistening white mountain in itself. From here it was bulldozed on to a conveyor loading system that took the gypsum out to the off shore mooring facility, where it transferred to a conveyor running along the mooring jetty and then into the holds of bulk carriers of up to 15,000 tons. A lot of it was destined for overseas, but large quantities were shipped to a wallboard manufacturing factory at Port Adelaide, the company owners being large shareholders in the whole operation. After a time the general wear and tear on the timber construction of the mooring facility led to the decision to fit steel rubbing plates at strategic spots, and in due course I, as the Island’s long time roving welder, was given an ongoing hourly contract to carry out the necessary on site welding.

I had no sooner completed this work when a major contract was let to strengthen the steel pilings at the shore end of the conveyor supporting structure. This area was open to the sea and winter storms had seen the new structure battered by introduced wave turbulence, and subsequent drastic erosion of the solid rock upon which the outer structure had been placed, one of the piling bases actually hanging in space with it’s original concrete and surrounding rock still attached! The repairs involved diamond drilling of large diameter holes down into the bed rock around the base of the steel piles, it was my job to cut the old bases off, and later when the holes were finished, large steel sections were placed in these holes, and I welded all the sections together, and back on to a new pile extension that I welded into place. This treatment was accorded to several piles that had become exposed, then the whole area was boarded up, and one solid block of special concrete was cast from underwater up to above the high water mark.

The welding on this contract was intermittent as required, but at times I assisted the small work gang with the other necessary site work, and after a few weeks I was back in my panel beating and welding shop in Kingscote once more. I had the only portable arc welding generator on the Island in the early days – one that I had constructed myself, and it was common for me to be called to a remote outback area, usually by the council, to one of their new road building operations. There I would find a bulldozer or road grader stuck in a creek or over a bank with some vital structural failure that prevented it from being moved, sometimes the problem would be only minor. On one occasion it was a bulldozer that had sheared half a dozen loose bolts in it’s main frame, and it was jammed down in a dry creek bed, unable to move. It was my job to weld on to the broken studs still in their threaded holes, and extricate them, actually a quite simple job that I specialised in.
On this particular occasion I arrived on site early in the working day and proceeded to remove the large studs one by one while the crew went off to have morning smoko. The whole job took only a few minutes, and when finished I strolled up to the crew and sat down to have a cup of tea with them, after quite some time I asked them if they intended to do any work that day to which they replied, ’We will when you get to work and fix the bloody studs!’. My reply that the job was done was met with disbelief, but someone was despatched to check!
This was one of those good jobs – an hour’s drive to the job, unload the gear, and less than an hour later, back on the road and heading home to type out a bill for travelling time and an hour’s work. But not all were that easy!

On one occasion after a hard day’s work at a remote location welding, I was unfortunate on the way home, to run off the wet slippery track into a roadside swamp, and have to walk for miles for assistance to pull me back on to the road, but this was all part of the charm of Kangaroo Island before it was developed to what it is today.