SYDNEY HARBOUR

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 28 April 1928, Page 11

SYDNEY HARBOUR

JJERE, in the green twilight of the piles, are sets of false teeth, sneezed and coughed over ferry sides . . . dotting the western channel to the Heads are five-inch solid cannon halls, fired half a century ago from muzzleloaders 'by artillerymen in funny little monkey jackets ... in the slimy security of this forest of piles—berth of great liners—there are mansion house supplies of crockery, cutlery and jams, tossed through portholes' by retroussenosed flunkeys. At the bottom of Sydney Harbour, in fact one will find marvels oddly out of place, and. now the toytliings of cephalopods, bulb-eyed flsli, arid the tides.

Recently when the “Daily Guardian's’' reporter asked divers, dredge hands and amphibious mankind generally to tell of what the harbour floorheld, oddities of recollection and plentiful evidence of novel, latter-day discovery came to light. Consider the Harbour Trust dredges Triton, Poseidon and Pan; they are floating museums, stuffed full of souvenirsl brought up 'by the great sucking maws of, the vessels. From the eastern channel the Triton, not long since, 'brought to light sonic, French .bayonets thrown overboard 'by.; mutineers •on a French vessel CO years ago. “'Strong Man Drew” will go through an impromptu exhibition of weightlifting with round shot that left the muzzles of old' Fort Denison guns many a year ago. But one of the great days in the life of the Sydney dredgomen was when, working under the Orient wharf, four bottles of seasoned whisky came up. The other day, at the P. and O. wharf the Triton recovered: two cases of assorted Tasmanian jams. The mess-room members are still gummy-lipped and happy over the sampling and subsequent consumption. At present at the foot of Bathurst Street the dredge Pan works daily. Last week the neighbourhood fell 'back with averted nostrils as tons and tons of cattle horns were sucked up and discharged to the light of day. In three 'days 200 tons of horns of rich aroma.

WHAT DIVERS FIND

were brought up, last evidence of the slaughter-house at the water’s edge many years ago. The' dredges keep themselves overstocked by plates and. cutlery dropped overboord. The good ship Poisedon struck a bed of oyster shells some 20 or 30 feet deep up in Homebush Bay, and the favourite call of motorist poultry-keepers is to this spot for a load of the shells for their, fowl runs. Apparently the natives long since dead were rather partial to- this food.

George 111. pennies dredged up from the Parramatta River bottom are now a glut on the numismatic market; and the same applies to sword-bayonets of 1840 from the same resting place. Gold watches (not working), opera glasses (barnacled), and sovereigns and half-sovereigns ask the dredgemen what they find and they become quite garrulous. * Those patient, leaden-footed fellows, the divers, don’t have such an interesting life with souvenirs, however, as riiost would think.

They tread through a sort of witchlight, ' their enormous feet stirring clouds of silt, which hang round them like petrified London mists. But they see the insidious and costly operations of Sphaeroma, L-imnoria, Ligua, Chelura, Tereban and Cobra at their endless feasts on the piles. These are the pests which eat about £40,000 worth of damage into, the piles of Sydney Harbour yearly. The Harbour Trust, with its 38,000 timber piles, reckons its yearly . repair bill owing to the operations of those borers at £20,000. v

Sydney’s half-dozen divers see these on the harbour -bottom, and now and again fetch up a string-like cobra, who can go straight through a pile like a steel bit. *

These, however, don’t monopolise the floor of the harbour. They have their definite feeds of hardwood l to ! interest them; and they leave to the bivalves, the jclloids and the filmy weeds and tides the teeth, small change, round shot and bullocks ’ horns.