Hobart Port

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SUE NEALES
May 13, 2008 12:00am
WHAT Richard Fader fears most is talk of Darling Harbour and Circular Quay.
For the co-founder of the Hobart-based Australian Shipping Supplies – with its national base in a draughty shed on Macquarie Wharf – turning Hobart's gritty working port into a sanitised tourist attraction is close to sacrilege.
But after attending the public meeting run by the Government's Sullivans Cove Waterfront Authority (SCWA) on April 17, that is the future he fears is ahead for Hobart's illustrious maritime heritage.
At the "Conversations in the Cove" forum, organised to discuss what was happening at the Railyards site on Macquarie Point, Mr Fader was shocked.
That was where he first saw maps and designer drawings showing that Hobart's commercial port area had been drawn into a web of power and influence governed by the Waterfront Authority.
Instead of listening to discussions about how plans to move the end of the railway line and its associated container depot to Brighton north of Hobart to make room for the new $1 billion Royal Hobart Hospital were progressing, Mr Fader found his Hobart business could be at risk.
At a powerpoint presentation by architect Tony Caro, co-winner of the Hobart waterfront international design competition run by the authority last year, a map was shown of the docks.
On the map, the boundary of the area under masterplan review as part of the Hobart Railyards project was no longer confined to the container depot, cement yard and sewage plant on Macquarie Wharf.
The thin red line now ringed the entire wharf, including the working port and docks. (See the maps here).
"I couldn't believe it," said Mr Fader. "I was just so shocked. When and how was a decision made between February and April 17 that the Waterfront Authority has taken over control from Tasports?"
Mr Fader said a working port appeared not to be part of the future.
Instead, he said, the talk was of canals, pedestrian walkways, waterfront apartments, office space, retail and mixed use precincts and entertainment areas, complete with pictures and images of urban design projects completed in other parts of the world.
New Buildings were shown along the waterfront edge of Macquarie wharf where the large wharf is now located, and where the US warship USS Tarawa has been berthed for the past four days.
All had public walkways in front of them and none looked like cargo or working port facilities, he said.
Instead, design sketches showed office and apartment buildings, or shops and conference centres like at Sydney's Darling Harbour.
Others have mentioned that beside the hospital, Macquarie Point will become home to a cruise ship passenger terminal and a new Antarctic Centre open to the public.
The big difference, says Mr Fader, between docklands renewal projects in Sydney's Darling Harbour, Melbourne's Docklands and on the Brisbane River, is that as the old docks were reclaimed for new trendy purposes, modern port facilities were built for commercial shipping elsewhere.
"We have heard nothing about that here," he said.
"Instead it seems that the Authority and its designers have decided that Hobart Port does not have a future, other than perhaps a few cruise ships, all entirely behind closed doors."
Mr Fader alerted the Tasmanian Maritime Network, made up of commercial shipping and maritime engineer companies, and the Tasmanian Polar Network, to what he had heard and seen at the April 17 meeting.
At the same time, meetings were organised with Hobart City Council mayor Rob Valentine and with Tasports marketing manager Charles Scarafiotti.
Mr Valentine, who attended the Conversations in the Cove forum, said neither he nor the council had any real power in the issue since the railyards and docks were government land, but he was concerned that mistakes might be made.
"It's all too easy to say now get rid of the port because it's not very busy today and doesn't fit in with some new plan for the war, but who knows what the future holds," Mr Valentine said. "It's so important to keep our options for the future open and to capitalise on our history, rather than to see our working port wiped out for some twee development like Darling Harbour."
Incat marketing manager Richard Lowrie, spokesman for the Tasmanian Maritime Network, said money and power was the problem.
"It's a prime piece of land that the Government owns and it thinks it can get a quick bit of cash for its Budget by selling some of it off to private developers," Mr Lowrie said.
"But if you lose it, and turn it into hotels and parkland and restaurants that's the end of Hobart's port and the end of Hobart's maritime heritage; you can never get it back."
Mr Lowrie, who stood as a Liberal candidate at the 2006 state election, accused Premier Paul Lennon of taking over the port by stealth.
"We want to meet with the Premier and ask him what are his objectives and is he giving the port away," Mr Lowrie said. "But we have been asking for three weeks and so far he has been too busy to meet with us."'
The problem, according to many port operators, is that the politicians and the public have been led to believe that Hobart's port is in decline.
But while container services have disappeared to Burnie, they say general cargo is picking up with the export of large amounts of value-added timber to Malaysia from the Southwood veneer mill.
The number of cruise ships visiting Hobart every summer is soaring, while Chinese and Russian governments are looking to make Hobart the new base for Antarctic scientific shipping activities.
"Who knows what the future holds?," says Polar Network chairman Bill Lawson.
Other operators talk about the future for oil and gas off Australia's continental shelf. Santos has two large oil and gas explorations ships working the West Coast between Burnie and Bathurst Harbour.
"We have a stewardship responsibility to enhance, not destroy, what has been handed to us for future generations," Mr Lawson said.
Greg Taylor runs his family's maritime engineering business which conducts about 80 per cent of the major shipping repair and refitting jobs in Tasmania.
He has found it hard to get Tasports to commit to making wharf space available at Macquarie Port when he is pitching for future tenders, such as naval repair jobs.
"They just won't give those commitments to us. It does make you wonder what's going on," Mr Taylor said.
"It's not hard to see what's happening. As soon as you start talking about putting a hospital and apartments there, it's pretty hard to have a real port anymore because the two things are incompatible."
The Waterfront Authority's Jeff Gilmore said there was no secret agenda to get rid of the port.
"There are no set plans, but you can't do work in the project area without understanding what's happening behind it," Mr Gilmore said.
"All we're trying to do is identify where the potential conflicts are and then work out how they can be accommodated better, but I'm not saying we shouldn't have informed the Maritime Network people better before we went public."
Architect Tony Caro said it would be a shame to see "the rich and varied uses of Sullivan's Cove being diminished".
"But at least everyone is talking about it and it sounds a lively debate, which in the end has to be good for our process of finding the best answers for everyone," he said.