Checkerplate

Corroded checkerplate covers the floor of a workshop bay inside Halvorsen's Boat Yard in Putney. The diamond pattern pressed into its surface, designed to give purchase underfoot on a working floor, is worn smooth along the heaviest lines of travel and pitted with rust across the rest. Light catches the raised sections, pulling the texture back into relief. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd began construction of the Putney boatyard complex in 1939, on land purchased two years earlier on the Parramatta River near Ryde Bridge. The site had its own considerable history before the Halvorsens arrived: emancipist James Squire had established what is described as the first commercial brewery in New South Wales on the same ground around 1798. The Halvorsens built over the top of it. The facility that took shape through the early 1940s included engineering workshops, blacksmithing and lumber shops, machine shops, and sheet metal fabrication areas, alongside the main timber-framed boatshed and five concrete slipways capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. At wartime peak, around 350 workers moved through these spaces. The yard produced Fairmile motor launches, fast supply vessels, and air-sea rescue boats for the Royal Australian Navy, the United States Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy, and the RAAF, with total wartime contracts exceeding £1,000,000. Post-war, the yard shifted to leisure craft and racing yachts. Anitra V, designed by Trygve Halvorsen, won the 1957 Sydney to Hobart overall. Gretel, designed by Alan Payne and launched at Putney on 19 February 1962, became Australia's first America's Cup challenger. The final vessels were completed at the Putney yard in 1976, bringing the total built across all Halvorsen yards since 1925 to 1,299 craft. The Commonwealth of Australia acquired the property around 1980 and converted it to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. Australia Defence Industries Pty Ltd took over in 1989. What remained in 2018, when this photograph was made, was a floor that had outlasted every purpose the building had ever served.