Not so Sleepy Wellington - but Still Windy

I thought when I interviewed with Eric that my next overseas trip was going to be back into Asia but I ended up in New Zealand last week. In Wellington to be precise. Which is where the New Zealanders hide their politicians. In a building that the locals call the Beehive. It kind of looks like one of those upturned wicker type beehives , though nothing like the boxes we used to raid as kids - there were no bears in our woods doing that. It was the local ten year old boys, who would have copped a hiding if we had ever been caught. Wellington for me is always about memories of the Wahine disaster in 1968, also marked for being the year one of my sisters was born. Later I sailed into Wellington from Lyttleton and the bow of the Wahine was still protruding from the harbour waters. It has long gone but I still see it there in my minds eye. A buoy still marks the spot. Interestingly when I was there last week the winds that blew about town approached some of the speeds that lashed the harbour when that ship went down. Wellington has changed a lot since I was there in the early 1970s but it has a slow country town air which is pleasant. You can walk the length of the CBD very quickly but a slow stroll takes you through a quite cosmopolitan dining and drinking scene which is not what I have ever associated with this very windy place. I happened to be there in February actually and the businessman I was with for lunch bumped into two ex Army friends as we walked to lunch. Men he had not seen since his Army days. Its that sort of village.

The video here catches a more recent ferry heading for the harbour mouth, then the view out over Wellington (with the QE2 in port) and then some views of the Malborough Sounds as we headed back to Sydney.

Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate

The storyteller was my class teacher who also was the school headmaster. Once each day he would perch on the edge of his desk and regale us with stories. Sometimes read, a chapter at a time. Sometimes told, also a chapter at a time. I was thoroughly enthralled by one story, of little guys ganging up on the big guy. It was a story that was dragged out over weeks and I couldn’t wait for each day to get the next instalment. There was nothing in the local library which gave me any insight into how the tale turned out. (And the internet was thirty years away!)

In this case the little guys were some outgunned ships that took on the Graf Spee, a beautifully designed and executed pocket battleship that ran amok, for a brief period, among allied shipping in 1939. HMS Exeter was one of the hunters. So too Ajax and Achilles. Achilles was a New Zealand ship and that was part of the appeal of the story. The Captain of the Graf Spee thought he was trapped in the place to which he had run to hide (the River Plate, hence the Battle of the River Plate) and scuttled his vessel rather than run the risk of an embarrassing defeat. Chances are he would have gotten away with a run to the South Atlantic since the forces lined up on him had been bashed up somewhat – Exeter had been withdrawn severely damaged.

Every time I drive past the sign pointing to the little town of Exeter I am ten again and listening to that story. And am transported to the mouth of the River Plate. South America was about the most exotic place of which I had ever heard, and hearing “Montevideo” was the time it was first impressed on me that the sound of a word can be sensuous. I practised it for months.

Bulk Carrier Wreck

A few posts ago I commented on the number of bulk carriers anchored off the coast of coal city Newcastle, just a couple of hours north of here. The sheer number makes for an impressive sight. I read in the papers a few weeks ago the number had swelled to 60+ .

Tonight, with storms lashing the coast here and further north all but two of those have put to sea. At last check one is dragging its anchors in an effort to stay off the beach. Another has rather dramatically ended up on the beach. Perhaps not a wreck just yet but the seas are pounding it hard and prospects don't look good for it.

The photo is courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald where you can see some pretty interesting images. You don't wish this sort of thing on anyone, or on any business but there is something fascinating about this sort of incident. What is that? A childish intrigue with wrecks, smuggling, and adventure? An equally childish intrigue at seeing something break up and open - seeing its innards? Secretly I suspect the latter - it was part of the wonder of seeing the ship breaking in Bangladesh.

Great Pheasant – or “The China-Australia Health Index”

I prefer Great Pheasant. It is a little more poetic than the latter. But they are connected. I was reading somewhere in the last few weeks that the backlog of coal ships anchored off Newcastle is currently at record highs. Newcastle is the loading port for Hunter Valley Coal which is being shipped at enormous rates to China. It has been a while since I had taken a look at the ships so when that town on Friday I had a quick peek. Ships as far as the eye can see. Actually 37 that I could see. Some dimly visible in the salt haze of a warm, windy day. All waiting their turn, standing high in the water revealing their rust red oxide, rust proofed bottoms. The crews must groan when they hear they are coming down here on a coal run since they spend a crazy amount of time sitting off the coast and have no opportunity to come ashore.

Tied up along side the coal terminals were three coal ships, the largest named Great Pheasant. It is difficult to get a close up photo of them since all the conveyors and loading machinery gets in the way. But if here is still a little boy lurking in you somewhere then this place is a great port to poke around in. There is a lot of machinery to admire. And some quick maths reveals some stunning statistics. Guessing that the Great Pheasant would carry 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes of coal the ships sitting of the beach represented 5.5million tonnes of coal. (The Great Pheasant actually carries more than 170,000 tonnes).

The mineral export boom to China continues, people are making a lot of money out of it, the share market is propped up on it, the government is counting on the healthy export driven economy to carry it through the next election, and China Health index, measured by the number of ships off Newcastle, sets new records. Signs of our times.

Sinking of Mikhail Lermontov

In Picton, (Google Earth 41.298901N, 174.0056E) a sleepy little town of about 3,500 people, is this lifeboat, a lonely reminder of a bizarre sinking of a Russian cruise liner a few years ago. 1986 actually. Murky but not bad weather, and light seas. Travelling in places it should not. And through well chartered waters - ferries travel through here on a daily basis from the North and South islands.

The conspiracy theories around this are thick. The favourite one is that it was an insurance job. A close second is the theory that it was an inside theft - when divers first got to the ship they discovered the ships imprest, an amount of gold bullion, was gone. Apparently it was there when the ship sank so someone got out of there by staying on board when the ship went down. A favourite of the dive groups. Or even a KGB plot to sink a submarine homing beacon to map the Pacific approaches.

Whatever the truth, this lifeboat is an odd trophy sitting in Picton, not far from where the ship went down. It is a sad memorial and struck me as pretty lonely and feeble when compared to what it had come off and what it had once represented. And the truth is , like all wrecks they are dangerous to dive. Three have died in the hull and one of those remains missing in there somewhere. New Zealand Maritime Museum site covers off some useful details.

Excellent grist for your next Russian spy novel. They did like poking around in this part of the world after all.

Ship Breaking - Using Hammer and Chisel

As you approach the beach, the first clues that you are in a unique part of the world, more so than usual, are the large numbers of small roadside stalls selling second hand (and new) ship's stores. Everything from brass fittings to boxes of toothpaste. The second clue, uncertain at first but rising to a background percussion is the noise of metal on metal. Soft, and in the distance, initially I was not sure what I was hearing. But as I walked over the dune and onto the beach I realised it was the sound of thousand hammers on steel. A remarkable tinging chorus of blows ringing across the water and mud in a rolling cacophony of sound, all blending into the one note but clearly made up of innumerable parts.

And there is no hyperbole when I say thousands. Look north and see dozens of tanker hulls pulled up on the beach. Look south and see an equal number. And learn that these ships are being broken up by hand. Hammer and chisel. On some ships the smoke lifts off the deck where a line of sticky bitumen is burning to help soften the steel before the wedges are driven in.

At my feet is a jumble of metal I don't recognise at first. Then it slowly dawns on me that the jumble is the remains of the diesel engine. The ship it belonged to has been dismantled from around it, piece by small piece and carried away. As the ship has shrunk it has been dragged further and further up the beach by large winches until all that is left is the engine. In this case, the block was pretty much gone and all that remained were the pistons. Enormous things about a metre wide and three metres tall. And those are finally smashed to pieces big enough to carry as well. (I was warned away from a couple of steel ropes lying on the beach. Hooked up to 300,000 tons of ship they regularly snap and the whipping rope takes out two or three people at a time, cutting them in half in the blink of an eye).

Truly extraordinary. It is a place to simply stand and absorb. Even the fact that the movement on the ships is made up of thousands of figures beavering away takes a while to sink into your consciousness. If you are in Chittagong for any reason (there are few good ones aside from doing business with the textiles industry) take a look at the ship breakers, and stay away from the steel ropes. In the meantime you can see some detail on Google Earth - copy and paste these coordinates into "Fly To" and let GE take you there. 22.4218444854 N 91.7348982087 E
August 1999