Sleeper Row

The timber sleepers in this photograph sit in neat rows on concrete that was poured in the early 1940s. They are guides, the kind of low timber rails that held a hull steady as it moved down the slipway and into the water. At Halvorsen's Boat Yard in Putney, that water was the Parramatta River, and the yard operated five slipways capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd began construction of this Putney complex in 1939, relocating from Neutral Bay after purchasing land near Ryde Bridge in 1937. The company had been founded by Harold Halvorsen and his brothers following the death of their father Lars in 1936. The yard was built for scale. At its wartime peak it employed approximately 350 workers and produced Fairmile motor launches, sixty-foot fast supply vessels, and thirty-eight-foot air-sea rescue boats for the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy, and allied forces. Wartime contracts exceeded £1,000,000 in value. After the war, the yard shifted to leisure craft and racing yachts. Anitra V, designed by Trygve Halvorsen, won the 1957 Sydney to Hobart overall. Gretel, Australia's first America's Cup challenger, was built here and launched on 19 February 1962. By 1976, the building of boats at the Putney yard had ended. Lars Halvorsen Sons completed their final vessels there, with 1,299 craft built across all their yards between 1925 and 1976. The Commonwealth of Australia acquired the property around 1980 and converted it to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. This photograph, made in 2018, records the slipways as they stood after decades of disuse. The concrete remains. The sleepers remain. The river is still there.