Kingscote ferry terminal 1958
Mention has been made elsewhere of the 10 months spent on this project, that started off with a block of 10 hours. As it happened, to be spent mostly sorting out the pile of large steel beams in various sections that had been shipped over to the Island by the Harbours Board.
Huge steel piles were being driven into the sea floor as a prerequisite of the large blocks of concrete that would be cast around the tops of the structures after the carpenters had constructed the form work. The interior steelwork of these blocks had to be joined together with steel beams welded into place, and various sections of steel reinforcing rod, also had to be secured in place, together with temporary beams to support the weight of the concrete boxing, and the weight of the concrete when it was poured. All this was some metres above the ocean, and also the several structures were linked by temporary walkways that progressed ahead of the main permanent joining steelwork.
In those days there was little in the way of safety regulations, and as this job was away from the mainland on an Island, as well as being over the water most of the time, no-one took any notice of the lack of hand rails and the loosely lashed planks underfoot, in any case it was obvious that if you fell, the worst that could be expected was a quick drop, drenched clothing, and abuse from the foreman when you had to take the time off to walk back to your dwelling and return immediately to the job! There were no safety officers in evidence in those days, to close the job down, or take you up to the nearby hospital for a check-up if you had an involuntary immersion, then run you home with the instruction to take a couple of days off on stress leave!
I was a private contractor in any case, the only one ever allowed on the job, and this only after a prolonged discussion (official and otherwise!) with the bosses back at the mainland Harbors board, and more importantly the arguments and eventual grudging acceptance from the Workers Union, who in any case, had real problems with getting their mainland welders to work on the job. It was more a case of them turning a blind eye to my presence, as by now I had become good mates with the half dozen union labourers who were billeted in holiday homes in the town, but there was at least one local labourer, who became permanently employed, and of course became a inion member – I flatly refused to join the union!
My 10 hours was gradually extended until it became 40 hours, and subsequently became a normal 40 hour week, with the contract re-negotiated, and an official form solemnly signed each week with the project manager – a really nice young guy who was in charge of his first job. He was a very good construction engineer (but only on paper!) and basically I became his mentor on what was an extremely difficult on-site job. He would consult the plans which were all nice and neat, and then try to relate it all to steel piles driven into the seabed, but many centimeters away from the planned position, and almost always quite a few degrees from square. This job was something quite different from the time honoured method of timber piles bolted together by work gangs who were adept at sorting out these problems with timber without recourse to consulting detailed plans.
With the main concrete blocks in place, the next challenge was cross bracing numerous steel piles, to create berthing 'dolphins', and welding mounting plates to take huge rubber blocks bonded to steel plates and supporting 1.5 x 4 metre formed slabs of 20mm 'rub' plates to these structures which stood alone away from the main structures. These were reached and worked on with the aid of a small dinghy and barely adequate scaffolding that on two occasions saw me slowly dumped in the ocean along with all the welding gear as the badly tied knots of the rigger slipped and ropes ran out through his various loops and hitches.
After the initial trips back and forth in the dinghy with the engineer to these groups of piles, where he attempted to make sense of the out of place steelwork, and calculate angles and do drawings of the way I should cut the ends of the cross braces to give a welding fit up, I persuaded him to just forget all the drawings, and leave it to me, I always loved these challenges, and I remember that for the first cross brace, he sat near me on the pile of steel beams back on shore, as with the aid of a large square, I translated my 'over the water' measurements into chalk lines on the ends of the large universal beam. He then watched as I oxy-cut the resultant strange shapes that were an affront to his practiced engineer's eye, and when the cutting was finished, the beam was taken out on a small floating platform that had been constructed from timber and old oil drums, and the workers hauled the brace into place, where it fitted almost perfectly and needed only minor trimming with the cutting torch. With the beam tacked into place, he inspected the work, and then announced, 'Well it's obvious that you don't need my help! Just go ahead and do them all!'.
From then on I just stayed behind the pile driving crew, sometimes working virtually underneath them as they drove the next set of piles. Some of the braces and beams were under the high water mark, and these had to be placed and welded in the periods of lowering tides, thus we would place cut beams, sometimes with their lower ends under the water, and if everything fitted properly, the top joint would be welded, with the lower joint held in place with chain blocks. The lowest tides were often at night, so I would set the alarm and be on the job as the tide was on the way down, welding exposed sections as the tide dropped. To do this I would have a two plank wide platform rigged with an empty oil drum at each end, and I would lay full length on this, chasing the tide down, with the weld only centimetres above the water, most times the sea would be flat calm, and I would lay there with a hanging storm lantern, in the darkness of the early hours with the platform tightly lashed to the piles, now and then having to loosen the ropes as the platform dropped with the tide, and sometimes tilted. This would continue until the tide started to rise, at which point I would pack up my gear and head for home!
It's hard to understand in these days of regulations, but I would be entirely on my own! If on the other hand, they could have persuaded Harbors Board welders to do this work (which they couldn't) there would have been at least five men on the job, including a foreman, and maybe two welders plus their welder mates. The whole team would have been unwieldy under the circumstances and little actual welding would have been accomplished – that is if they could persuade any of the welders to get out of their warm beds! Any welding that would have been done would have been in the daylight low tides, I did use these periods, but the sea was invariably rough with the day time winds blowing, and the night time flat calm conditions were preferred.
So the months went by – large fabricated sections were shipped over from the mainland workshops, some, as in the case of the large trussed roadway bridge, had to be spliced together in the middle of it's length after it had been lifted into place, the splicing point resting on temporary wooden piles and timber bracing that had been put in place just for that purpose.
After careful alignment by jacking and packing, temporary welded braces held everything in place, the final fitting up and welding being done on a calm day when there was little movement of the structure which under running sea conditions, always moved around. Only the completion of the structure saw any real stability, but even then the built in flexure points saw plenty of movement in a gale – and still do I guess to this day!
The last job was the provision of a large berthing 'dolphin' at the end of the service jetty and this really flexed! Large 'green heart' timber piles were shipped over from Canada, and driven into the sea floor, but even these didn't finish up in a geometrically perfect place. After driving had been completed and the tops leveled, a specialist draughtsman came over from the mainland and accurately identified the position of nails driven into the centres of their tops (6, I think there were) as their full length above the sea floor swayed gently. He then returned to his drawing board on the mainland, and laid out the centres for the large holes that were to be cut in the odd shaped 300mm thick fabricated steel platform that was already being built. At the same time the diameter of the top of each individual pile was identified, and steel caps with large (50mm) bolts at their centres were fabricated and galvanised as was most of the structure. These caps were then fitted in place on the piles by the carpenters.
The steel platform was shipped over in sections, and bolted together on site, then the whole deck was lifted on to the piles, large loose steel washers going on to the tops of the piles first. When all was in place and the piles all settled into their positions, the large washers were welded solid in place, the nuts screwed down on to large heavy spring spacers, the nuts locked with a weld, then large one metre diameter plates were welded over the holes. Alas, all this work was for nothing, as it wasn't long before a careless ferry captain hit the whole structure full on, the timber piles snapped off, and the whole thing went down in 10 metres of water! So the whole thing was redesigned and eventually replaced.
Towards the end of my stay on the job, most of my time was spent fabricating and welding into place various brackets for the electricians, and doing odd modifications that had been deemed necessary. I even helped with rigging the wire rope lifting cables as there were no proper riggers on the job, then came the day when the power was turned on, and the bridge was run up and down for the first time, and my job was over. Unfortunately this whole structure is no longer used as the large sea going ferries have ceased to run to the Island.
Smaller installations have been made in later years by private companies at the point where the Island is closest to the mainland, a distance of only 15 kilometres. This was never considered an option until recent times with good roads and modern passenger buses – together with high speed catamaran ferries – the Kingscote port having always been the steamship terminus and entry point for the Island community, and so it remained until it became obvious that there were better economic alternatives.
Back in the 50s, the new concept of a large roll-on roll-off motor ferry built in Amsterdam, and taking the long 100 kilometre route around to Adelaide via the journey up the Adelaide Port River, was the only considered answer to the transport problem, which from the earliest times had been plied by steam and sailing vessels alike. In fact the streets of Port Adelaide had been built with volcanic rock sourced from the northern shore of Kangaroo Island in the vicinity of Kingscote – it's transport by sailing lighters to Port Adelaide, being considerably cheaper than stone being hauled by horse drawn wagons from the Adelaide hills. Another natural advantage was that the volcanic Island rock was faulted into small fist sized pieces, whereas the Adelaide hills were virtually solid hardrock, and the expense of quarrying it and reducing it to a useable size was considerable.
After the job was completed I left it for a few months until mid summer, then casually swam down and checked out the discarded timbers. Most were easily accessible, their underwater weight was such that I could lift the ends and hitch ropes on. I motored my 21 foot fishing boat over to the jetty, positioned it over the timbers one at a time and pulled the timbers (some of which were close to 20 feet long) up under the keel of the boat.
I would then motor back to my mooring area and run the boat up as close to the shore as possible at high tide to drop the timbers -- then return for another until the tide dropped too far. In this way I soon had a pile of timber laying out of the water at low tide. I then had to cut most of them in halves (handsaw of course!) to enable me to skid them ashore and load them into my trailer to transport them home. Their cross section was around 16 x 8 inches (400x200mm) and they were still really heavy – also now pretty much waterlogged!
There I somehow managed to cut them lengthwise on my small circular saw bench, for strainer posts, fence posts and odd structural beams in my new workshop extension.
There were still tons of beams left under the jetty and some 40 years later, I was told that a one time around the world adventurer, Albi Mangels, had eventually salvaged the remaining beams and built a home at Kingston (South Australia) with them.