Mezzanine

The mezzanine level at Halvorsen's Boat Yard in Putney looks down over a workshop floor where tools and machinery have gathered dust since the yard's working life ended. From this vantage point, the scale of the building becomes apparent: a timber-framed industrial structure set above the Parramatta River, designed not for display but for the business of building boats. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd began construction of the Putney boatyard complex in 1939, having relocated from Neutral Bay the year before. The company had been formed in 1937 by the sons of Lars Halvorsen, the Norwegian boatbuilder who had arrived in Sydney on 25 December 1924 with his eldest son Harold and no capital, renting their first shed in Drummoyne for ten shillings a week. The Putney facility included engineering workshops, blacksmithing and lumber shops, machine shops, and sheet metal fabrication areas. During the Second World War the yard produced more than 250 military vessels, including 16 Fairmile motor launches, 43 sixty-foot fast supply vessels, and 147 thirty-eight-foot air-sea rescue boats, with a combined contract value exceeding £1,000,000. At its wartime peak, the yard employed approximately 350 workers. After the war, the yard returned to leisure craft and racing yachts. Gretel (KA-1), Australia's first America's Cup challenger, was launched at the Putney yard on 19 February 1962. Designed by Alan Payne and commissioned by Sir Frank Packer, she became the first challenger to win a race in the America's Cup in 28 years. The final vessels from the yard were completed in 1976; 1,299 craft had been built across the Halvorsen yards between 1925 and 1976. The Commonwealth of Australia acquired the property around 1980 and converted it to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. By 2018, when this photograph was made, the tools and machinery on the workshop floor had long since fallen silent.