On Rail

A vessel sits on the concrete slipway at Halvorsen's Boat Yard in Putney, rusting steel rails running beneath it toward the Parramatta River. The hull is heavily corroded. The rails, which once guided craft down to the water's edge, are seized with rust. The slipway itself is crumbling at its edges. Nothing about the scene suggests the yard is in any condition to work. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd was formed in 1937 by the five sons of Lars Halvorsen, a Norwegian boatbuilder who had arrived in Sydney at Christmas 1924 with no capital and rented a shed in Drummoyne for ten shillings a week. The family built their way up through Drummoyne, Careening Cove, and Neutral Bay before purchasing land near Ryde Bridge on the Parramatta River in 1937 and relocating to Putney the following year. Construction of the Putney complex began in 1939. The yard operated five slipways on the Parramatta River, capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. During the Second World War the family retooled for military production, supplying vessels to the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the United States Navy, and the RAAF under contracts exceeding £1,000,000. At peak wartime production the yard employed approximately 350 workers. Post-war, the yard produced notable racing yachts including Anitra V, which won the 1957 Sydney to Hobart, and Gretel, Australia's first America's Cup challenger, launched at the Putney yard in 1962. Between 1925 and 1976, Lars Halvorsen Sons built 1,299 craft across their Sydney yards. The boatyard closed around 1980. The Commonwealth of Australia subsequently converted the site to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility, and the property later passed through several operators before sitting largely dormant. The slipway in this frame, photographed in 2018, records that dormancy plainly: rails into the river, a hull going nowhere.