Lady Huia

Lady Huia sits moored inside the boatshed at Halvorsens Boat Yard, Putney, her hull bearing the marks of years in a building that has not seen active boatbuilding since 1976. The shed is a large timber-framed structure built over the water on the Parramatta River at 20 Waterview Street, part of a complex that included concrete slipways, a timber wharf, and associated workshops. The yard ran five slipways capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. A crane was added in the late 1940s. The site carries more than a century of industrial history. James Squire, an emancipist, established what is described as the first commercial brewery in New South Wales on this land around 1798. The Halvorsen family came later. Lars Halvorsen arrived in Sydney on 25 December 1924 with his eldest son Harold, having lost their capital when their ship Nidelv sank uninsured in the Bristol Channel in 1920. Lars rented a boatshed in Drummoyne for ten shillings a week and began building timber yachts. The family formed Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd in 1937, purchased land at Putney on the former Squire brewery site, and began construction of the Putney complex in 1939. During the Second World War the yard produced more than 250 military vessels, including 16 Fairmile motor launches and 147 thirty-eight-foot air-sea rescue boats, with combined contracts exceeding £1,000,000. The yard employed approximately 350 workers at its wartime peak. Post-war, the family returned to leisure and racing craft, building yachts that won the Sydney to Hobart multiple times, including Anitra V in 1957 and Freya in three consecutive races from 1963 to 1965. In 1962, the yard launched Gretel, designed by Alan Payne, Australia's first America's Cup challenger. Between 1925 and 1976, the Halvorsens built 1,299 craft across their yards. Boatbuilding at Putney ended in 1976. The Commonwealth of Australia acquired the site around 1980 for use as a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. By 2018, when this photograph was made, the shed held boats like Lady Huia in a silence the slipways had not known when the yard was running.