On the Catwalk

Parallel timber rails run the length of the shed floor at Halvorsens Boat Yard in Putney, converging toward the open waterfront end where the Parramatta River and a distant tree-lined bank are visible. Their purpose is straightforward: move the hull to the water. Everything in the shed was built around that logic. The timber columns, the dense web of timber and steel trusses overhead, the long clear span of the floor. A single red barrel lies on its side in the mid-ground, the only object breaking the emptiness. The building was designed for launching, not for looking at. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd constructed the Putney complex from 1939, completing the boatshed, concrete slipways, timber wharf, and associated buildings in the early 1940s. The yard operated five slipways on the Parramatta River, capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. At its wartime peak the workforce reached approximately 350 people, producing 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. The combined value of wartime contracts exceeded £1,000,000. After the war the yard returned to leisure craft and racing yacht construction. The 1949 Daily Telegraph described it as the most modern facility of its kind in the British Empire. In 1962 the yard launched Gretel, designed by naval architect Alan Payne and commissioned by Sir Frank Packer, Australia's first America's Cup challenger. Between 1925 and 1976, across the Drummoyne, Neutral Bay, and Putney yards, Lars Halvorsen Sons built 1,299 craft. The boatyard closed around 1980. The Commonwealth of Australia subsequently converted the site to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. By 2018, when this photograph was made, the shed stood empty. The columns held the roof up. The rails went nowhere. Light filtered through the large gridded panels set into the far wall, across a floor that had not carried a hull in decades.