Painting the Svitzer tug Wonga in Sydney Harbour

The 'Wonga' was built in 1983 and was one of the Svitzer 'pusher' tugs.

Their names started with 'W' - Wilga, Wonga, Woona, Walan, Watagan. I've no idea why they picked that particular letter to christen their tugs. As a 'wonga' is a type of pigeon, not a marine bird, I'm not sure why this name was chosen for a marine vessel.

To me, the trio of names 'Wilga', 'Wonga', 'Woona', had a sort of alliterative poetry, and whenever I painted one of the three, I would be asked if I also had paintings of the other two, to make up the set.

DH236 'The tug 'Wonga' with 'Victorian Reliance''
2007 oil on board 20 x 25cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other paintings of tugs

This shows the 'Wonga' in action with a cargo ship.

They were once a very common sight in Sydney Harbour, when Sydney Harbour was still a fully working port. As 'Artist in Residence' on the East Darling Harbour Wharves during the first decade of this century, I would see at least one of these tugs everyday. If they weren't accompanying one of the container ships or Ro-ros (roll-on roll-off car vessels) to the East Darling Harbour Wharves, Glebe Island or White Bay, they would be escorting a cruise ship to the Cruise ship terminal at Darling Harbour Wharf 8, or an oil tanker to Gore bay.

DH241 'The 'Wonga' 2011
oil on board 28 x 35cm
Available

This painting shows the 'Wonga' passing Goat Island. It was on its way to a new task, from its then home in East Balmain next to the ferries.

The number of tugs in Sydney Harbour declined with the closure of East Darling Harbour Wharves and its replacement with the controversial Barangaroo development project.

DH194 The 'Wonga' 2008
oil on canvas 20 x 25cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other paintings of tugs

This earlier painting shows the 'Wonga' passing Balmain.

Now, the 'Wonga' is one of the 2 tugs (the other being the 'Walan') based at Port Pirie which is located 223 kilometres north of Adelaide at the top of Upper Spencer Gulf,

Port Pirie, a small town of 16,000, is still home to the type of heavy industry now removed from Sydney Harbour. The Nyrstar concentrate smelter in Port Pirie is one of the largest smelters in the world.

Related Posts

Painting the tugboats of Sydney Harbour

Marine Art exhibition at Australian Maritime Museum

A last look around the Harbour Control Tower

Today's painting on the deck gallery is a view of the much maligned and now demolished Harbour Control Tower.

BAR54 'Tower of Power' 2010
oil on canvas 61 x 61cm

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It had many sarcastic nicknames : the "Pill" (controlling the berths in the Harbour, the "concrete mushroom", and even "the hypodermic in God's bum"!

But I think that the viewer of my canvas can find the same stern monumental dignity  that attracted me to it as a subject.

BAR54 'Tower of Power' 2010
oil on canvas 61 x 61cm

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The Sydney Harbour Control Tower, which lingered for a while at the northern end of Barangaroo, was demolished over a period of eight months starting in March 2016.
Consisting of an 87m high concrete column topped by an observation room with utterly breath-taking views, it gave the Harbour Master and Port Operations officers an ideal position from which to oversee shipping movements around Sydney Harbour.
The tower was designed in 1972 after two ships collided in the shipping channel off the knuckle of the wharf at Millers Point.
It stood sentinel over Sydney Harbour from 1974-2011 giving continual supervision of shipping movements.
Sydney Ports relocated its harbour control operations to Port Botany in April 2011, leaving the tower to gather dust for 5 years.

DH159 The empty wharf
2007 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm

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I am naturally biased - I had the run of the Harbour Control Tower as a studio for nearly a decade.
As well as painting spectacular views of Sydney from the top floor and the amenities level, I used it as a sort of exclamation point in many landscapes of the wharf and Millers point. This canvas of the empty wharf has the strange melancholy of a de Chirico and the light poles marching steadily toward the Tower echo rows of classical columns.
As a pictorial device, the Tower would give an otherwise mundane streetscape an extra frisson. The feeling of someone potentially observing the scene from above from those green angled windows gave an almost sinister dimension.

MP5 Harbour Tower & Dalgety Terrace 2

2014 acrylic on canvas 18 x 13cm

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The decision to remove the tower was controversial.
The developers of Barangaroo had considered it an eyesore as the surrounding development transformed the former port into a millionaire’s playground.
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, self-appointed Baron Haussman of Sydney, and never one to shy away from an argument, stated with his customary belligerence that the tower did not have a "shred of heritage about it" and that calls to keep it were "rancid reactionism".
But he would, wouldn't he.

With his nearly pathological hatred of industrial heritage, that sits oddly with his working class background, he was grimly determined to get rid of it and pitched relentlessly into anyone with a good word to say about the former wharf.

This article written in November 2014 in the Sydney Morning Herald has a photo of me 'en plein air', painting the Harbour Tower Paul Keating so despised.

The Office of Environment and Heritage had previously described the tower as being of state significance “for its pre-eminent role in the history and maritime operation of the Port of Sydney.The Tower demonstrates 35 years of 24/7 operation in the Port of Sydney from 1974-2009 as the Port Operations and Communications Centre providing supervisory control over the many thousands of shipping movements in Sydney Harbour every year,” the Office said in its previous listing of the tower as a heritage site.
After the Heritage Minister decided not to list the tower on the State Heritage Register, the NSW Government approved a development application from the Barangaroo Delivery Authority to remove the former Harbour Control Tower . In their words : 'in order to achieve a naturalistic form and character for the reserve that is consistent with the site’s concept plan'.
I can't think of anything less naturalistic than Barangaroo. For some reason it brings to mind a poem called aptly "Poetry" by Marianne Moore about an imaginary garden that had real toads in it.
But as in the poem, the developers and their cheerleaders have little time for anything that doesn't fit their very narrow definition of what is "useful". Certainly nothing as useless as heritage.

'same thing may be said for all of us—that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand.'

Excerpt from
"Poetry" by Marianne Moore

The National Trust  rejected a proposal by the Barangaroo Delivery Authority to demolish the tower while the City of Sydney council wanted it retained as an artwork or public lookout.

Some people suggested alternate uses for the empty tower: bungee jumping, abseiling, a viewing tower over Sydney Harbour, or a “pop-out” café.
However the Barangaroo Reserve project director Peter Funder said “We looked at a number of re-use options and it just wasn’t viable. It completes the vision we’re trying to deliver here of recreating the headland of Barangaroo.”
As for arguments about usefulness, you could also question what practical use does the Barangaroo Headland Park serve. It has allegedly been returned to the 1836 footprint, yet it is far from natural bushland, and the public certainly isn't permitted to hunt or fish there. So it is a construct - just as artificial as the concrete wharf it replaced.

This canvas painted in 2015 from the Stamford on Kent shows rows of lollipop like palm trees perched tier upon tier, as though on a giant wedding cake. The stairway to the top cuts through the cake like a knife cutting a slice out of the cake. Symmetrical and hierarchical, and as unlike real bushland as the horses on a carousel are from the living animals.

MP45 Barangaroo Headland Park from the
Stamford on Kent 2015 oil on canvas 122 x 153cm
COLLECTION: MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NSW
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Its main function seems to be as a distraction from the scale of the southern end.
A spoonful of sugar to make the development go down.
A sort of 'Trojan park' under which is smuggled the true purpose of Barangaroo; to separate punters from their money.
It's a pity that almost all evidence of Sydney as an industrial port has been wiped away. I certainly found poetry in it.
I can't get used to the lack of Tower in the streetscapes of Millers Point - they look strangely empty now.

Related Posts

Article in the Sydney Morning Herald about my Barangaroo painting on display in the new galleries of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

Barangaroo paintings in Frances Keevil Gallery

Paintings from the top of the Harbour Control Tower in Frances Keevil Gallery

No Place like home - Plein air painting in Millers Point

Today's painting on the easel of my deck gallery feels appropriate for these uncertain times when many people have been confined to their home in unexpected lockdown and have been rethinking many things they previously took for granted. Such as the relationship between the individual,the community and the government.

Plein air painting on site with protest banner
MP22 '67 Lower Fort st - This is my home'
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
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What makes a house a home?

Is it just a place, or is there something a bit more intangible and numinous?

Why is where you live so important?

Plein air painting on site with protest banner
MP22 '67 Lower Fort st - This is my home'
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
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I had been painting the East Darling Harbour Wharves for at least a decade before the development of Barangaroo so radically transformed the nature of the western side of the Sydney CBD. Long before the consequences of the end of Sydney's Working Harbour were understood by the general public, I could see the knock-on effect and how it would change the shape of people's lives.

I increasingly started to paint in the streets of the Rocks and Millers Point,knowing that the departure of the heavy industry and shipping would leave this area once again vulnerable to developers and the government. Only a couple of decades earlier, similar pressures had been faced, and the push back from an alliance of residents and unions culminated in the Green Bans led by the revered Jack Mundey AO. Some redevelopment ensued, but residents were relocated into purpose-built social housing in the Sirius Apartments, and Millers Point mostly held its ground.

But this time seemed different.

Millers Point, a historic harbourside enclave with 19th-century terraced houses is only a stone's throw from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Walsh Bay Wharves and the former East Darling Harbour Wharves (now Barangaroo).

The grand terraces of Lower Fort Street perch on the escarpment overlooking the Walsh Bay Wharves. They spent the last century owned by the Harbour Trust in its various manifestations, and run as 'residentials' for waterside workers. The wharves, stores and workers' housing were completely integrated. The tight knit community was composed of people whose families had worked on the wharves, in some cases over 5 generations.

Plein air painting on site with protest banner
MP22 '67 Lower Fort st - This is my home'
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
Enquiries

In the 1980s the Millers Point residences passed from the control of the Maritime Services Board to that of the Department of Housing and there was a noticeable decline in service, repairs and maintenance of the properties.

In 2012 the NSW government decided that almost 300 public housing properties at Millers Point must be sold saying the revenue would contribute to the public housing budget although how exactly the money will be spent hasn’t yet been made transparent.

Plein air painting on site with protest banner
 MP22 '67 Lower Fort st - This is my home'
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
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You could easily tell which houses were still inhabited. Banners were hung over balconies, spray painted onto sheets in stencil letters: 'Millers Point Not 4 Sale'; 'Say No to the Total Sell Off of Public Assets'.

The ubiquitous Reg Mombassa designed protest T shirt of a skull smoking a cigar and wearing a top hat, flapped from every washing line.

I painted a series of canvases recording the protests.

Plein air painting on site with protest banner
 MP22 '67 Lower Fort st - This is my home'
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
Enquiries

The most creative protest banner was a washing line "This is my Home" on the corner of lower Fort Street and Downshire Lane in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge. It summed up every emotion and argument in a single pithy line.

As I painted this, I became friends with its author, Sally.

The artist on site with the local wildlfe
while plein air painting on site

I adore lizards, especially blue tongues, and was very happy when Sally lent me her blue tongue lizard to cuddle. To protect it from the local cats, it had a refuge in the garbage bin left lying on its side. I'd wondered why the bins were apparently scattered randomly on the tree stumps, and then realized they were lizard havens filled with rocks, food and water for 6 out of 7 days, and only used briefly for their original purpose.

I returned to paint a much larger canvas, but soon after, some low life stole Sally's T shirts. She replaced them with a set of towels with another appropriate and thought-provoking motto,  "Age in place" stencilled on them.

Sally was a real character. Despite almost unbearable daily pressure from the authorities, she had the moxie to take the Government to court to try to remain in the home she had lived in for over 30 years.

Unfortunately after putting up a spirited fight, she eventually lost the case and was relocated against her will.

Related Posts

Millers Point Three years On

(Vanessa Berry's blog 'Mirror Sydney'- with a photo of me painting in High Street)

"Millers Point through the Looking Glass "Clearing House

CLEARING HOUSE is the Tenants' Union of NSW's record of what's going on in Social and Affordable Housing portfolio redevelopment and renewal in New South Wales. They asked my permission to use my painting on this site.

Millers Point from the top of the Harbour Control Tower

Tie a yellow ribbon

There goes the neighbourhood

Walsh Bay History - Paintings of a passing Port

Millers Point from the top of the Harbour Control Tower

Before the inevitable demolition of the Harbour Control Tower, I wanted to paint a very large panorama of this amazing view.

I'd had the run of the top floor and the amenities level of the 87 metre high Harbour Control Tower from the early 2000s until port operations finished there in April 2011. Afterwards I had occasional access to create paintings of various stages of the construction of Barangaroo. 

I'd spent many unforgettable New Year’s Eves on the top floor, painting 360 degrees of the fireworks exploding underneath against the spectacular harbour view.

The perspective was very tricky, so I warmed up with a few smaller works first.

This is a small study of the rooftops of the heritage Miller's Point terraces and the former Bond stores of the Walsh Bay Wharves.

Work in progress " Miller's Point  and Walsh Bay Wharves

from top of the Harbour Control Tower "

2014 oil painting on canvas 36 x 46cm

.

There was such an overwhelming mass of tiny details that I needed to tackle this subject in a series of small works before risking getting bogged down in a huge oil painting. I wanted to understand the rhythm of the landscape.

The perspective is made more complex by the landbridges over the twisting streets winding their way from the angled rows of Walsh Bay Wharves up the hills.

The entire suburb of Miller's Point lies at my feet and the roads seem to curve towards the Opera House in the middle distance.

HCT47  'Millers Point from top of Harbour Tower'
oil on canvas 36 x 46cm

As you can see, my palette changed by the time I finished this work - one of the hazards of working 'en plein air'. I started early, but didn't finish for a few hours, so the clear pale yellows of the morning deepened to the burnt orange and rich purple shadows of the afternoon.
I had to stand on a chair to paint this, as the windows on the Amenities floor were a bit too high for me to see the terraces.
I'm only 5'1"- short, even for a woman.
Exactly the same height as Toulouse-Lautrec. Unfortunately I love painting canvases on an epic scale.

The tower would sway in the wind, sometimes almost imperceptibly, and sometimes with a rolling motion that can induce seasickness which is distracting when trying to paint fine details.

In the far distance, you can see the silhouette of the half-demolished Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island, which was finally removed by October 2014. I had just finished a stint as 'Artist in Residence' on Garden Island painting this before the demolition started.

The demolition of the Harbour Control Tower would be next. However I did manage to finish a few large scale panoramas from the top floor, before I lost one of my best studios forever.

The State library now has several of these works in their collection.

Related articles

Paintings of the old Port

Millers Point, 3 Years On

Out from the storerooms -paintings from the State library Collection

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Last of the Hungry Mile

Tie a yellow ribbon

Eaten by robots

The mother art is architecture

Barangaroo - tabula rasa

Today's painting on the deck is a panorama painted on the East Darling Harbour Wharves. It includes 2 of my former studios - the Harbour Control Tower and Moore's Wharf.

The now demolished Harbour Control Tower dominates the empty wharf. A row of pink terraces perch on top of the golden sandstone escarpment
while the Sydney Harbour Bridge can be glimpsed behind Moore's Wharf, a handsome heritage sandstone building housing the Sydney Ports Corporation.

The cute little federation building on the left is a Federation era sewage pumping station. It has since been cleaned up and relocated.

BAR60 'Barangaroo north -
The Harbour Tower,
escarpment and Moore's Wharf 2'
2010 oil on canvas 38 x 76cm

This canvas was painted just after the wharves had been cleared of all their maritime infrastructure, and just before work began on the construction of the Barangaroo Headland Park that replaced it.
It shows a place in a state of limbo.
I've included a couple of photos of this and a couple of other canvases as works in progress, to show some of the process involved in their creation.
I had to lug a french box easel, paint, brushes, medium, canvases, a couple of tables, a chair, and my lunch, packed inside trolley luggage. After doing this for several decades, I've become quite fit and strong!

Plein air oil painting behind the barrier
on the East Darling Harbour Wharves
Showing this canvas as a work in progress
with my trolley luggage, table, chair, french box easel,
paints, brushes and other equipment.

Barangaroo is a paradox.
The area now known as Barangaroo was off limits to the public for over a hundred years but was the central core of Sydney's economy. Necessary, yet ignored ; in full view yet strangely invisible.

Now it is centre stage, hotly debated and fought over, yet still unknown to the vast majority of Sydney.
Once a despised slum - now prime waterfront. Only the fashion has changed...

BAR60 'Barangaroo north -
The Harbour Tower,
escarpment and Moore's Wharf 2'
2010 oil on canvas 38 x 76cm

It had a complex. fascinating multi-layered history but has been treated as though it is tabula rasa - a blank canvas for architects to impose their will upon.

Nearly 200 years of maritime heritage disappeared with barely a token gesture to its previous existence.

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Eaten by Robots

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Tie a yellow ribbon

The Last of the Hungry Mile

My exhibition at the Sydney Open

The Last of the Hungry Mile- Harbour Control Tower from East Darling Harbour Wharves

Today's canvas was painted from inside Wharf 4 in East Darling Harbour Wharves during the its last few weeks as a working port.

DH181 The last of the Hungry Mile   
2007  oil on canvas  180 x 122cm

FINALIST 2007 SULMAN PRIZE

The once bustling wharf became a ghost town, as the cargo-loading infrastructure was dismantled, the 3 shore cranes were loaded onto barges for Port Kembla or Webb Dock, and anything remaining was put into storage or into a skip bin.

The wharf has now closed forever and Sydney’s traditional role as a working harbour is nearly over.
For Sydney Harbour to be stripped of its original character and purpose, was almost unthinkable.

Abandoned places have a haunting beauty.
They are points of temporary stasis in the turning world of urban change.

It was eerily silent; waiting for the demolition to start and the genesis of Barangaroo to begin.

Barangaroo is about hubris - a grand feat of ambitious central planning in search of a purpose. The vaunted economic rebirth of the area has like so much else been sent into hibernation by the Covid crisis.

DH181 The last of the Hungry Mile   
2007  oil on canvas  180 x 122cm

FINALIST 2007 SULMAN PRIZE

The columns of light poles point towards the Harbour Control Tower, which was one of the last vestiges of the working port in the area, and was demolished a few years later.
This Port Operations and Communication Centre was a milestone in the history and operation of the Port of Sydney. The construction of the tower gave oversight of maritime operations over all the Port of Sydney for the first time.

Nestling underneath, on the escarpment is the historic Hotel Palisade, once a rough waterside early opener, now gentrified for the expected inflow of tourists to Barangaroo on the west and the revamped Walsh Bay Wharves to the north-east.

Why the Hullaballoo about Barangaroo?

"May close without warning"

The Hungry Mile  
Tie a yellow ribbon

Millers Point