Kayaking at Port Welshpool
After our earlier visit to Port Welshpool in January this year, Maggie Somerville and I returned several days later with a view to finally wetting the kayak. I had been inclined to avoid Port Welshpool in previous years because it looked rather forbidding but, having checked out most of the other potential kayak-paddling waters in the area, I felt we could not avoid it forever. The forecast was considerably better. The day was fine and sunny. The wind, though nowhere near as strong as it had been during our previous visit, was still quite fresh, and throwing up a significant chop. Launching was also a bit of challenge, as there were a number of much bigger boats also wishing to use the ramp.
We headed east, but the conditions were a little intimidating and Maggie, understandably, was not comfortable. (Neither was I entirely.) This was as far as we got.
I had had a quick glimpse over towards the west, on the other side of the breakwater, before we had headed off, and had a feeling that would be much easier. So it turned out to be.
I got some interesting photos of the undersurface of the Long Jetty.
The jetty has been significantly refurbished in recent years to make it safer. It was interesting to compare the new bolts with the old.
The native grasses along the seashore are very attractive.
After putting the kayak back on the roof of the car, we had a bit more of a poke around. Just before leaving, at the far west of the township, we found the ramp that we should have launched from at the very beginning. Next time!
Visit to Port Welshpool’s ‘Long Jetty’
In January this year, Maggie Somerville and I visited Port Welshpool in South Gippsland, Victoria, with a view to paddling our kayak in the waters there. The forecast was bad, but we decided to check it out anyway. When we arrived it was blowing an absolute gale. Kayaking was completely out of the question, but we decided to have a good look around anyway. The Long Jetty in particular attracted our attention.
There is an excellent array of interpretive signs on the beach near where the jetty begins its long journey out over the water, but the weather was not conducive to spending a great deal of time reading them.
The jetty starts off perpendicular to the beach, but does a full ninety degree turn, and ends up parallel to it. The signs explained that the reason for this was that the jetty needed to line up with the deep channel out there. Interestingly, however, it turns in a wide curve rather than a much simpler sharp turn. The reason for this is that a railway line and train was originally planned for the jetty, but this was never constructed.
There is a lot to see out on the jetty itself. The Broman Diving Bell, which allowed divers to walk on the sea bed of Bass Strait, is fascinating.
You can see the strength of the wind. Maggie is nearly being blown away!
I tried to get a view inside.
I was very taken by this chart showing the various fish species that can be caught from the jetty.
I’m not a fisherman myself, but I can see that these specially built fishing stations could be very handy. (I have only shown one here, but there are several.)
It’s always reassuring to see a lifebuoy, though I wouldn’t want to use it!
Again you can see the wind blowing against Maggie as she made her way back to land.
We didn’t get to launch our kayak, but had a fascinating and very enjoyable day at Port Welshpool nonetheless. If you are travelling down in the corner of the world, I would most definitely recommend a visit.
‘The Landing’ (Stockyard Creek)
The South Gippsland town of Foster is primarily known these days as a farming centre. Its economy is also bolstered by tourism, particularly given its proximity to Wilsons Promontory. However, under its earlier name of ‘Stockyard Creek,’ the town began life following the discovery of gold in the area. A battery from the ‘Kaffir Hill’ mine stands outside the museum now, and across the road is a monument to the four timber getters who first discovered gold there in 1870.
Travel overland was almost impossible in those early days, and prospectors would travel by sea from Melbourne to Port Albert (to the east of Stockyard Creek), and from there, via a smaller vessel, out into Corner Inlet and then up Stockyard Creek as far as the water would allow. From there they travelled the relatively short distance overland by foot to the diggings. Later, a tramline was erected.
The place on the creek where they disembarked became known as ‘The Landing.’ Few records survive, but the following engraving and photograph give us some idea of what it must have been like.
The engraving, by Samuel Calvert (1828 – 1913), is of the SS Tarra of Port Albert, under Captain Pinkerton, arriving with prospectors at ‘The Landing’ on 12th August, 1871.
Caption: Sketch on “Stockyard Creek.” Arrival at the “Landing Place.”
Source: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136149915/view
The following photo is taken from the Foster & District Historical Society Inc. 2011 calendar.
Caption: “The Government wharf built at the Foster Landing in 1871.”
Maggie Somerville and I have made two trips in our kayak down Stockyard Creek from ‘The Landing’ to Corner Inlet and back again (once in January last year, and again in January this year), in an attempt to gain some sense of what it must have been like back then. ‘The Landing’ is situated only a few minutes drive south of Foster, at the end of Landing Road, a gravel road which comes off the sealed Fullers Road. It is a very quiet place these days, and it is rare to find another soul there. This year we had the good fortune to share it with three mates – a horse, an alpaca, and a black-faced sheep!
Other than the fact that it must often have been buzzing with humanity 150 years ago, one gets the sense that it has changed little since those days. The area is extremely tidal. From memory, the return journey last year was on a fairly high tide. Both the outward and return journeys this year were made on a very low tide. Indeed, the above photograph of a sailing boat tied up at the Government wharf shows just how little water was in the creek at times.
Fortunately, there is a boat ramp at ‘The Landing’ now, though it is pretty rough, and presents quite a challenge at low tide. The following photos of the ramp were taken at high tide last year.
This next photo, by way of comparison, shows the ramp at the end of our return journey this year.
This photo of Maggie in the kayak at the end of our paddle this year shows just how little water there was. Once again, it appears remarkably similar to the earlier photograph from a hundred odd years ago.
The following photos from last year give some idea of the current woodwork for supporting boats.
Here is how it looked at low tide this year.
We didn’t time the trip down from ‘The Landing’ to Corner Inlet, but my guess is it takes about 30 – 45 minutes in a kayak, paddling at a very leisurely pace. It is a peaceful, beautiful trip, which leads you past mangroves and steep mudbanks (depending upon the level of the tide), with tussock grass rising above the mangroves as you approach Corner Inlet. Thousands of small crabs live in the banks, and it is fascinating to watch the frantic retreating hordes scrambling up the bank and dropping into their holes as you approach.
There are plenty of herons, and last year a couple of wedge-tailed eagles hovered very low above us at one point. (I think they decided that we were just too big!) Once out in Corner Inlet there are large numbers of ibis, and also many gulls.
Navigation in Corner Inlet at very low tide is difficult, as you find yourself confined to narrow channels, surrounded by vast areas of mud. Last year, with a reasonable amount of water, we paddled up Dead Horse Creek to the west. This year I tried to take us up Bennison Creek, to the east, but the low water made it impossible to be sure of one’s bearings, and we abandoned the attempt.
On our return journey this year we ran out of sufficient water to float about thirty metres from the ramp. Pulling the kayak that last few metres through the mud is not something I want to do again in a hurry! That said, it really brought home to us just how well chosen the site for ‘The Landing’ really was!
There isn’t a great deal of information available about ‘The Landing’ at Stockyard Creek, or much awareness of its existence, and I am writing these notes in the hope that it may encourage others to follow in our footsteps (or paddle strokes!), or perform further research on this fascinating history. If you do decide to journey down the creek by kayak, I would advise you to try to avoid low tide if possible. The thick, black mud makes life very difficult.
Finally, a word about the eels in the creek. At very low tide there is not always room for both a kayak and an eel. Don’t be surprised (although I’m sure you will be!) if amidst a great splash of water a large fleshy eel presents itself briefly on the mud beside you before hurling itself back into the water as you pass!
A Yarn of ‘A Nautical Yarn’
A Yarn of ‘A Nautical Yarn’
‘A Nautical Yarn’ is one of the nine Australian folk songs that American singer Burl Ives recorded in 1952, and which were to have such a profound effect on Australians’ perception of their own folk music heritage. The ‘yarn’ takes place on the Murray River. (Whether the adjective ‘nautical’ can be applied in the context of fresh water is arguable.) The words are credited to Keighley Goodchild. They are a play on the general notion of shipwrecks, so many of which occurred, and so tragically, in the 19th century. A paddle steamer is making its way upstream to the town of Wahgunyah (the furthest upstream port on the Murray) when a storm arises during the night. The crew fear for their lives, but the boat is grounded on a sandbar, and they all walk safely through the shallow water to shore!
According to his obituary, which was published in The Riverine Herald in 1888, Goodchild was born in London, and had a good education. He had arrived in Melbourne fifteen years earlier (1873) from New Zealand. How long he had been in New Zealand is not stated.
The Echuca Historical Society also has information about Goodchild’s life. He was born in 1851. (By way of historical comparison, Henry Lawson was born in 1867, and Ned Kelly in 1855.) Goodchild was very much a newspaperman. In Melbourne he worked for the Argus. He moved to Echuca in 1880, and stayed there until his death at the age of only 37 of ‘consumption’ (TB) in 1888. He worked for a number of newspapers, and was editor of the Echuca Advertiser. For the last two years of his life he worked as a compositor for The Riverine Herald. (It was the job of a compositor to arrange type for printing.) He also published a column under the title ‘Municipal Musings’. (Many of these can be easily accessed via Trove.)
Goodchild also wrote poetry, and in 1883 he self published a small collection of his own work with the title ‘Who Are You? : A Volume of Verse’. One of the poems in this book, ‘While the Billy Boils’, was included in the final volume of a series of poetry collections published in London. The series was titled ‘Canterbury Poets’, and the final volume, with Goodchild’s poem, ‘Australian Ballads and Rhymes: Poems inspired by Life and Scenery in Australia and New Zealand’ (1888), was edited by B. W. Sladen of Oxford. (Goodchild received his copy several days before he died.) The phrase, ‘while the billy boils’, was just beginning to gain traction in Australia and New Zealand, and this was not the first time it was used. It was also chosen as the title of Henry Lawson’s first collection of short stories, published in 1896. Lawson did not use the phrase himself, but his editor, Arthur Jose, felt it was apt. (Jose almost certainly knew of Goodchild’s poem.) Plans were afoot for a second collection of Goodchild’s verse to be published in London, but this did not eventuate, no doubt due to his premature demise.
Here is the first stanza of ‘While the Billy Boils’ by Keighley Goodchild.
While the ruby coals in the dull grey dust,
Shine bright as the daylight dies;
When into our mouths our pipes are thrust,
And we watch the moon arise;
While the leaves that crackle and hiss and sigh
Feed the flame with their scented oils,
In a calm content by the fire we lie
And watch while the billy boils.
‘A Nautical Yarn’ is included in the blog ‘An Australian Folk Song A Day’, by John Thompson. John references the source of the song as ‘Big Book of Australian Folk Songs’ by Ron Edwards, and adds this note from the book:
“…Ian Mudie in his book ‘Riverboats’ suggests that “it is so different from the rest of Goodchild’s work that it seems quite likely he heard it on the riverboats or in the pubs of Echuca – and wrote it down as his own.”
So perhaps Keighley Goodchild did not write ‘A Nautical Yarn’ after all!
To further complicate matters, there is more than one tune for the song. Goodchild’s stated tune was ‘The Dreadnought’, but Burl Ives’ folio of Australian songs used ‘Villikins and his Dinah’.
Who knows, perhaps Goodchild would have developed into a writer to rival Lawson and Paterson if he had lived longer? Then again, that can no doubt be said about a number of writers whose lives were cut short in those hard, early days.
A Nautical Yarn
I sing of a capting who’s well known to fame;
A naval commander, Bill Jinks is his name.
Who sailed where the Murray’s clear waters do flow,
Did this freshwater shellback, with his Yeo heave a yeo.
To the Port of Wahgunyah his wessel was bound
When night comes upon him and darkness around;
Not a star on the waters it clear light did throw;
But the wessel sped onward with a Yeo heave a yeo.
Oh, Capting, oh! Capting, let’s make for the shore,
For the winds they do rage and the winds they do roar!”
“Nay, nay,” said the capting, “though the fierce winds may blow
I will stick to my vessel with a Yeo heave a yeo.”
“Oh! Capting, oh! Capting, the waves sweep the deck,
Oh Capting, oh! Capting, we’ll soon be a wreck –
To the river’s deep bosom each seaman will go!
But the capting laughed loudly, with his Yeo heave a yeo.
“Farewell to the maiding – the girl I adore;
Farewell to my friends – I shall see them no more!”
The crew shrieked in terror, the capting he swore –
They had stuck on a sandbank, so the men walked ashore.
© Stephen Whiteside 13.06.2020
Paddle steamer ‘Adelaide’
(State Library of South Australia, PRG 1258/1/12)
References
Keighley J. Goodchild (The Riverine Herald, Friday 6 April, 1888, page 2)
(https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/114660028/12107908)
Keighley Goodchild
https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A9270?mainTabTemplate=agentWorksBy
‘Biography of a Book – Henry Lawson’s While the Billy Boils’ by Paul Eggert (Sydney University Press 2013, pages 150 – 1)
http://ozfolksongaday.blogspot.com/2011/11/nautical-yarn.html
The Poor Ketch ‘Coquette’
I have always loved the idea of taking interesting events from Australia’s maritime history and shaping them into poems or song lyrics for contemporary audiences. Stan Rogers, the Canadian singer songwriter, is the master of this, with songs such as ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’ and ‘Barrett’s Privateers’. I can’t really think of an Australian equivalent. We have plenty of songs about shearers and drovers, but we have never mythologised our maritime history, rich as it is.
Since becoming friends with Maggie Somerville and staying at her house in Foster, I have begun to reacquaint myself with the history of South Gippsland, much of which is, of course, maritime.
It is tempting to simply write about shipwrecks, but that seems such a cheap way of approaching the subject – of course they are going to be tragic, and there is no shortage of them to choose from.
That is why the story of the ketch ‘Coquette’ struck my fancy. I first heard of the ‘Coquette’ in a book entitled ‘They Fished in Wooden Boats – A History of Port Franklin District and the Fishing Families’, by Neil Everitt, which I found in the Visitors’ Information Centre at Wilsons Prom several years ago. Pages 22 – 23 are devoted to the story of the landing of gold prospectors by boats and ships at Stockyard Creek to take them to the diggings. (Stockyard Creek was also an early name for Foster.) A number of vessels are referred to, including the ’41-ton ketch Coquette.’ I decided to see if ‘Trove’ could tell me anything about the ‘Coquette.’
Turned out it most definitely could. Yes, the ‘Coquette’ sank, but nobody was killed, and the events both preceding and following are interesting and, thanks to Trove, readily accessible in considerable detail. Of further appeal to me was that the ‘Coquette’ sank in Waratah Bay, a part of the coastline that Maggie has especially taken to heart. (She even wrote a song about it!)
The first article, published in Sydney in the Australian Town and Country Journal on Saturday 12 November 1892, tells us that the four masted ship ‘Drumblair’ has become stranded on the sand in Waratah Bay on the way from Sydney to Port Pirie in South Australia.
The second article, published in Melbourne in The Argus on Friday 23 December 1892, tells us that the Drumblair was winched off the sand with the help of anchors that were left behind, and are obviously very valuable. The ketch ‘Coquette’ has been sent from Melbourne to retrieve the anchors and related gear (presumably pulleys and ropes/cables). An anchor is successfully winched out of the sea but, unfortunately, it smashes against the bow of the ‘Coquette’, and causes sufficient damage to the hull that the ‘Coquette’ sinks within ten minutes, in about eight fathoms (48 feet) of water. The crew take to a dinghy, arrive safely on shore, and return to Melbourne overland.
The third and final article, published in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate on Wednesday 22 Feb 1893, tells us that a steamer, ‘Albatross’, has been despatched from Melbourne to raise the ‘Coquette’. Alas, the attempt was unsuccessful. All the hawsers broke before she could be brought to the surface. The ketch was ‘only slewed around’, and has been ‘abandoned to her fate.’
What was her fate? Was the ‘Coquette’ ever raised from the sea floor? Did she simply disintegrate on the seabed? Do traces of her remain? I have been unable to answer any of these questions.
Meanwhile, here is the song lyric I pieced together from these three articles.
The Poor Ketch ‘Coquette’
Chorus
For the poor ketch ‘Coquette’
The saddest fate yet –
It’s sunk beneath Waratah Bay.
We all have high hopes
We can lift her with ropes.
Alas, it will not be today,
No,
Alas it will not be today.
Verse 1
Through storm she sailed, but did not veer
From her task, to bring back gear
And anchors from the rescue mission grand
For that four-masted ship ‘Dumblair’
Which slowly dragged it, with great care,
From where it lay so helpless on the sand.
Verse 2
Alas, an anchor, swinging high
Beneath her bow went all awry.
It struck her stem, and wrenched it from its planks.
Amid the tumult and the din
The ocean quickly rushed right in.
She sank, but none were drowned – a cause for thanks.
Verse 3
The steamer ‘Albatross’ then sailed
Where others had so often failed
To raise the ketch ‘Coquette’ from where it sat.
It could not lift her from the ground,
But simply slew the ship around
And that it seems, at least for now, is that.
© Stephen Whiteside 02.02.2019
I am sure Stan Rogers could have created something far more entertaining and engaging, but I guess it is still better than nothing!
