Workshop Floor

The concrete floor of the Halvorsen's Boat Yard workshop at 20 Waterview Street, Putney, carries the evidence of its last working years in the material left on its surface: discarded tools, layers of sawdust, and the wear patterns of a floor that was never meant to be decorative. The facility included engineering workshops, blacksmithing and lumber shops, machine shops, and sheet metal fabrication areas, all built to support a production yard operating five slipways on the Parramatta River, capable of handling vessels up to 90 feet and 100 tons. The Putney site was constructed from 1939, the year wartime military contracts began. Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd had been formed in 1937 by the five sons after their father Lars died of osteomyelitis in October 1936, with Harold assuming the role of managing director and principal designer. The company relocated from Neutral Bay to Putney in 1938, and construction of the complex continued into the early 1940s. At wartime peak, the yard employed approximately 350 workers producing Fairmile motor launches, fast supply vessels, and air-sea rescue boats for the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Netherlands Navy, United States Navy, and the RAAF. The combined wartime contract value exceeded £1,000,000. After the war, the yard continued building leisure craft and racing yachts. Gretel, Australia's first America's Cup challenger, was launched here on 19 February 1962. The final vessels were completed at the Putney yard in 1976. Between 1925 and 1976, Lars Halvorsen Sons built 1,299 craft across their Drummoyne, Neutral Bay, and Putney yards. The Commonwealth of Australia acquired the property around 1980 and converted it to a Royal Australian Navy repair facility. What this photograph recorded in 2018 was what remained after decades of successive use: a floor, some tools, and the sawdust that nobody swept up.