Norfolk Guardian

Today's painting on my deck gallery is a diptych of an unusual visitor to the East Darling Harbour Wharves.

I spent most of the early 2000s as ‘Artist in Residence’ on the East Darling Harbour Wharves before its redevelopment into Barangaroo. 

One day in 2005 I arrived very early on a calm clear morning & a couple of wharfies grabbed me as I signed in.They were very excited & yelled “Quick, get your easel, you must paint the Norfolk Guardian- you don’t see ships like this every day!” 

A smallish vessel was docking at Wharf 5. It had an oddly shaped crane in its centre, which I later found out was known as a ‘derrick’ crane as it looked similar to the old fashioned oil rigs. A Derrick ship’s crane is a relic of the past, harking back to the days before containerization forced uniformity of ship design & changed their lines from sleek to squat & boxy.
The luminous peach tones of the horizon meeting the skyline of Goat Island & the northern suburbs in the background harmonized with the butter yellow ship's crane & sky blue hull, making an odd contrast with the heavy industrial subject matter. 

I watched the complex interplay of the ship's crane with the shore crane with a mixture of fascination & trepidation as rows of pipes were unloaded with consummate skill.
I didn't know how long I'd have to paint it before it left, so I added an extra canvas to the original one, making the total image a square.

DH34A-B'The Norfolk Guardian Diptych' 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

each panel oil on canvas 91 x 46 cm
Available for sale
The M.V. Norfolk Guardian (IMO: 8600856) is a General Cargo that was built in 1987, sailing under the flag of Tonga, & freighting break bulk cargo to Norfolk Island, New Zealand & the South Pacific. Ports of call include Norfolk Island, Auckland, Lyttleton & Marsden Point, Tasmania. Transhipments can be arranged to various destinations in the South Pacific, including Samoa, Fiji, etc.
Cargo handled by the Norfolk Guardian includes: general cargo, hazardous goods, freezer/cooler, hardwood poles, sawn timber, processed timber products.
They also ship Personal Effects from Norfolk Island & New Zealand to Yamba, Australia.

"Break bulk" is a term used for products which can't be transported in containers. It includes a wide mix of articles- from salt, gypsum, cement to timber, steel coils and heavy machinery as well as cars, trucks and boats.

About 50 years ago, the containerization of shipping modified the wharves dramatically & transformed port cities beyond recognition.

The humble shipping container isn't just a metal box - it created the world as we know it today.

Once goods were loaded and transported around the world as "break bulk" cargo. Container standardization revolutionized global trade, making it easier, quicker and cheaper. However,with the advent of the container, some of the mystery & magic of the shipping industry was lost forever.

John Crowley, the Port Operations Manager, used to describe the East Darling Harbour Wharves (aka Port Jackson) as a ‘boutique’ wharf. 

Port Botany is built on a superhuman scale and only deals with containers, so is huge, homogeneous and increasingly run by robots. Port Jackson, on the other hand, had a mix of break-bulk & containers & therefore was more dependent on the personal skills and judgement of the individual wharf workers. 

Islander ships are dwarfed by the container ships & totally unsuitable for the huge computerized straddle cranes of Port Botany. 

Now that the East Darling Harbour Wharves are closed, most "break bulk" is unloaded at Port Kembla, although Blackwattle Bay and to an increasingly lesser extent Glebe Island and White Bay still handle salt, cement and gypsum. 

Related Posts 

 

My Hungry Mile page in this blog 

 

End of an era - Maersk Gateshead 

 

Last of the Hungry Mile 

 

Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa 

 

Crane, East Darling Harbour Wharves

Crane, East Darling Harbour Wharves

In 2003, the State Government announced that the stevedoring wharves at East Darling Harbour, on the western edge of Miller's Point, known since the Depression as the 'Hungry Mile', would be transformed into a new urban precinct, which would later be known as Barangaroo.
The wharf has now closed forever and Sydney’s traditional role as a working harbour is essentially over.
For Sydney Harbour no longer to be a working port and to be stripped of its original character and purpose, was almost unthinkable.
I resolved to paint its hidden history before it was too late. This concrete expanse was often derided as 'ugly', usually by people who had never set foot on it, but I found it a rich and fascinating source of inspiration for a series of several hundred paintings.
I became 'Artist in Residence' in 2003, and was still painting there after the last wharfie left in October 2007. I always painted 'en plein air', even though the completed works have the compositional poise of a Jeffrey Smart.
DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

This was painted towards the end of East Darling Harbour's days as an operational wharf. I had often painted each of the 3 cranes on the wharf, although being able to get all three in a single canvas was nearly impossible. They didn't run on rails - they all had retractable stabilizers in the shape of pyramids, and these lifted to allow the cranes to trundle up and down the wharf on their rows of tyres.

I spent much of my time on the wharf chasing these wretched things up and down the wharf, in hot pursuit of my recalcitrant subjects. Even if their lower halves stayed put, they were raising, lowering, twisting and turning. I'd have to start 4 or 5 small canvases, each one with the crane in a different pose.

This crane was "L1" the oldest & most complicated of the 3 Liebherr cranes known by the wharfies as "Big Bird" as apparently it was originally yellow. 

It was loathed by the wharfies as it was complex and rather over-engineered, so prone to breaking down. The L3 crane was much easier to operate and maintain, and incidentally, much easier for me to paint. If the L1 crane moved even slightly out of its original position, it was infinitely harder for me to predict what I should alter to adapt the old position to the new one. The result is that I have a lot more unfinished and unfinishable paintings of this crane than of the 2 others put together. 

DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' left panel of Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

When I was painting on the wharves, all three cranes were red, which made them difficult to paint against the red Wallenius Wilhelmsen ships. 

Although they were all a shade of red, and more than likely had been painted at the same time with the same brand of paint, each of the cranes was a different shade of red. Not just lighter or darker, but some were definitely more towards the pink than red. The L1 crane was a light- medium bluish pink, the sort of pink derived from mixing magenta or alizarin crimson with white. L2 veered between napthol crimson, Windsor bright red and in the more care-worn patches, the pink obtained by mixing white with cadmium red deep. L3 was in places almost a true red, requiring mostly cadmium red medium and even a few vermilion highlights. All these colours had very different properties, as the cadmium colours were very opaque and the alizarin and magenta were semi-transparent and took much longer to dry. They had one thing in common though, they were amongst the most expensive paints to buy - Series 4. 5 or 6. The prices go up exponentially from Series 1. Series 2 paints are about half as much again as the previous series, Series 3 half to two thirds as much as 2, etc, etc. As usually the cranes were in front of a red Wallenius Wilhelsen ship, which was a different hue of red again (usually cadmium red light), this meant that the art shops became seriously rich from my stint as 'Artist in Residence ' on the wharf. But to do justice to the scene in front of me I had to be true to the subtle nuances of the changing light and colour in front of me.

DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' right hand Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

Later in 2007, all three cranes were painted yellow again in the AT & T colours. A couple were taken to Melbourne's Webb Dock, but 'Big Bird' was taken down to Port Kembla on the "Sea-Tow" barge.

It's still at Port Kembla - I noticed it when I was painting the Port Kembla Copper Stack before it was demolished in February 2014.

I painted this diptych in 2007 as it was undergoing much needed maintenance in front of Wharf 6, not long before its new paint job and long sea journey.

The odd looking object wrapped in white is a helicopter. Some of the wharfies had been discussing what would be the most difficult object to wrap as a birthday present, so that the recipient wouldn't be able to guess what it was. One of them suggested a tricycle, but I think the helicopter would have won that competition.

 

Related Posts

 

My paintings of the Hungry Mile 

 

The end of an era 

 

Paintings of a passing port 

 

Last of the Hungry Mile 

 

Painting the Svitzer tug 'Wonga' 

 

A last look at the Harbour Control Tower 

 

Millers Point from the top of the Harbour Control Tower 

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.

Related Posts

Eaten by Robots

Barangaroo - Red Square, the Drill Rig and a little Archaeology

Tie a yellow ribbon

The Last of the Hungry Mile

My exhibition at the Sydney Open

No 'glamping' on Cockatoo Island

This is a painting of the Utility crane in front of Sutherland Dock, Cockatoo Island.

CK36'Cockatoo Island- Crane, Sutherland Dock and the escarpment'
2006 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
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For the last decade, the public has been allowed to visit the island, but when I painted this in 2006, it was still off limits.

The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust was frantically fixing up the infrastructure to be able to open it to tourists. I would travel by barge at the crack of dawn from Mort's Dock with the other workmen.

CK36'Cockatoo Island- Crane, Sutherland Dock and the escarpment'
2006 oil on canvas 75x100cm
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In the afternoon, I had to make sure I didn't miss the last barge back to the mainland, or I'd have to spend the night there.

Now there is 'glamping', but back then there were no facilities at all! No tents, no shelter - I occasionally spent the odd night in a tunnel, which was creepy. There wasn't even drinkable water & we all got terribly sick until we learnt to bring our own water!

CK36'Cockatoo Island- Crane, Sutherland Dock and the escarpment'
2006 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
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20 years before, I had painted on the island, near the end of its life as a working shipyard.

Related Posts

Painting the industrial past on Cockatoo Island

More paintings of Cockatoo Island

Eaten by robots

My old studio, the Harbour Control Tower

MP55 Harbour Control Tower from Observatory Hill

2016 oil on paper 9.5 x 9.5cm

Available

 
Another one of my old studios has bitten the dust.

I feel like I can jinx a place just by painting it.

I have been observing the start of the demolition of the Port Operations Harbour Tower in Millers Point.

Love it or loathe it, the Tower was one of the last vestiges of Barangaroo's former life as a working port.
The heart and soul of the former 'Hungry Mile' has been ripped out and replaced with machines.
Literally.

MP56 Harbour Control Tower from Argyle st

2016 oil on paper 9.5 x 9.5cm

Available 

Once the 'mushroom cap' at the top of the Tower was fully removed, the concrete stem below it was eaten away by robotic excavators from the top down.

Just another portent of the world envisioned by Isaac Asimov in his book “I, Robot. Technology asserts its robotic grip whether you like it or not.

Progress is so impersonal.

Eaten by robots- what a way to go!
So very Dr Who. "Exterminate, exterminate!"

MP54 Harbour Control Tower

from the Hotel Palisade 2016-7

oil on canvas 122 x 153cm
Available

Meanwhile paint peels off surrounding terraces awaiting their inevitable gentrification. The Hotel Palisade opposite has completed its journey from seedy early opening waterfront dive to expensive hipster hub, while retaining some of the trappings of its colourful past.

Related Posts

Barangaroo - Red Square, the Drill Rig and a little Archaeology

Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa

Tie a yellow ribbon

The Last of the Hungry Mile

My exhibition at the Sydney Open

The triumph of the machines

In early April 2015 I was asked to paint some of the last manual port movements at the Patrick terminal in Port Botany.
Now the containers are still being unloaded by port workers, but automated straddle cranes stack the containers onto trucks, replacing many port workers.
I was permitted to paint and set up my easel a week before the April change-over.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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My viewpoint was from a narrow balcony above a 2 storey gatehouse.

On the ground floor was the First Aid room, while on the top floor, port workers facing redundancy were receiving career advice.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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From my vantage point I could see the yard being prepared for the new automated system.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm
oil on canvas 2015
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In the centre, concrete barriers were arranged in grids to separate the trucks from the construction.

To the right, the giant stacks of containers were removed, leaving an eerily empty yard.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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To the left is the new observation tower, as yet unmanned, where the new Autostrads will be controlled by radar.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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At night it looked desolate and lonely. 

As the new driverless vehicles are remotely controlled, there won't be the same requirement for lighting the yard.

Painting the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
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At the moment, the giant straddle cranes are still operating with drivers.

Painting the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
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One day the giant straddle cranes and even the trucks may become driverless.

Paintings of Port Botany
Left to right: the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
 giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
100 x 75cm oil on canvas 2015
Night panorama straddle cranes  Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
 Port Botany panorama 31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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I know that it's all in the name of efficiency, but when I left, it looked like a ghost town.

Night,containers,  Port Botany 25 x 31cm oil on canvas 2015
Night, Port Botany panorama 20 x 40cm oil on canvas 2015
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As the last ship before the changeover was unloaded, a line formed of the old straddle cranes which were due to be scrapped soon after.

Night,containers, Port Botany

25 x 31cm oil on canvas 2015

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 Ominously, while I was painting in my temporary gatehouse studio, I had met some of the same people both delivering and receiving career advice 7 years earlier when the East Darling Harbour Wharves  closed down to become Barangaroo.

PB2 'Anatoma, Port Botany' 2015 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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A few weeks after my stint as 'Artist in Residence' at Port Botany, some of the port workers who had received redundancy, were called back to work when some of the robots malfunctioned and dropped a few containers in the water!

Related Posts

A last look at the Harbour Control Tower

Another one bites the dust

Related articles

Sydney's Patrick terminal goes automated, with fewer staff but dancing robots (smh.com.au)

Port Botany's automated machines could attract M&A suitors, says Asciano CEO (theage.com.au)