Cairns Wharf Complex is a heritage-listed wharf at Wharf Street, Cairns City, Cairns, Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1910 to 1948. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 17 December 1999.
History Cairns was established by Europeans as a port in the second half of the nineteenth century. European passengers and government officials landed at Trinity Inlet on 3 October 1876, and the inlet was subsequently declared a port of entry and clearance on 1 November that year. The township of Cairns was surveyed in late 1876. The impetus for the establishment of the port came largely from the newly- established Hodgkinson goldfields.
Upon settlement, rudimentary port facilities were constructed. These initially consisted of timber jetties with piles built out across the mud and mangroves to boats moored in deeper water. Most had an attached shed. Better facilities quickly replaced these early structures as they wore out or simply fell down. Generally these were privately constructed by shipping and trading companies such as Howard Smith, Burns Philp and AUSN. The town, including shops, hotels, warehouses, banks, the customs house and other government offices developed around the port area.
In 1884, Cairns was selected as the rail terminus for the Herberton tin fields and construction of the Tablelands rail line west was begun. This assisted the fortunes of the port and in effect secured the future of the town. A timber railway wharf was built in 1886, connecting the wharf directly to the rail line into the hinterland. The other early northern port settlements of Cooktown and Port Douglas dwindled as a result of Cairns' railway connection. Each had previously threatened the position of Cairns as a port in the north.
In 1906 the Cairns Harbour Board was instituted, chiefly to commission and oversee improvements to the port. The private wharves were progressively acquired by the harbour board and by 1915 it owned all the wharves. Regular dredging of the channel was carried out, allowing larger vessels to enter the port after 1912.
Soon after taking over control of the Cairns wharves, the Harbour Board began planning for an extensive new system of wharfage extending along the shoreline in one unbroken length. The wharves were to be built in stages of reinforced concrete to the plans of Gummow Forest and Co of Sydney. Supervision of the project was given to Edward Gregory Waters, the Harbour Board's Chief Engineer. E.G. Waters worked as an architect, surveyor and engineer at various locations in north Queensland from 1890, working in Cairns from 1909 until 1917. In 1910 construction started on the first wharf, in length, at the end of Lake Street (number 3 wharf). This wharf was finished by 1912. Further stages were commenced shortly after, and by 1915 there was an unbroken frontage of of concrete wharves in Cairns. In the early 1920s, loans totalling allowed the harbour board to further extend the wharves, and by 1925 the concrete wharves were long. A railway was extended along the front of the wharf. By the end of the 1920s another concrete wharf with rail approach and shed was erected, separate from the others on the other side of Lily Creek. It was initially known as number 6 wharf, and later number 8 wharf. Cairns was the first port in Queensland to adopt reinforced concrete wharves to any extent.
Cairns introduced a mechanical system of handling bagged sugar in the mid 1920s, one of the first Queensland ports to do so. A storage shed was constructed as part of this system, capable of storing 6000 to of sugar. It later became known as "White's Shed".
Sheds were constructed on top of the main wharves to accommodate goods waiting for export or to be distributed around the town. One shed was built for each of the five berths. The sheds at berths 1–3 were joined together in one continuous line; sheds 4–5 were built as one long structure. In 1938 the Cairns Harbour Board produced a handbook, detailing its activities in the port. This handbook described the wharfage facilities at Cairns as comprising some 1,900 linear feet of reinforced concrete wharves, with six "airy spacious sheds having floor space of 89,020 square feet", as well as the shed for sugar storage. Electric and hand powered cranes were also built at the rear of the wharves to lift heavy goods onto ships.
During World War II Cairns was the centre of a great deal of activity. At the port, the wharves were extended again in 1943 to create six continuous berths, and a shed was built and became number 6 shed. Also during the 1940s, a building was constructed for the Waterside Workers, for use as an amenities hall. It housed lunch and meeting rooms, showers and toilets. This building was located on the western side of Wharf Street between Lake and Grafton Streets. It was demolished in the 1990s. In 1942, extensions were made to number 5 wharf with a new shed being erected.
A clock tower above number 3 shed was constructed in 1948. It was reported in the 1948 Annual Report of the Cairns Harbour Board "[t]he electric striking clock was long felt want, particularly on the water-front". The Cairns Post carried a photo of the clock on its front page on 23 September 1948 with the caption that it "is a valuable asset to the port". The clock was manufactured by A.L. Franklin of Sydney at a final cost of . Access to the clock mechanism was originally achieved via a ladder on the roof of the shed. Subsequently, a hole was cut in the office immediately below the clock making it easier to periodically change the car battery.
Many hundreds of people have been employed on the waterfront in Cairns over the years. Most working activity at the Cairns wharves has shifted upstream to newer wharf developments, including the bulk sugar terminals, built in the 1960s. These earlier wharves are used mainly for recreational vessels and passenger liners, but not to the capacity or extent that they were used in the past.
In 2010, a redevelopment project commenced on the wharves, including the adaptive re-use of Number 3 wharf shed as the new Cairns Cruise Liner Terminal.
Concrete Wharves Replacement of the timber wharves with concrete ones proceeded progressively starting in about 1910. This commenced with the manufacture of 67 concrete piles and foundation dredging. Plans were for each section of the wharf to be long by wide with a shed long by wide built directly onto each wharf. Reclamation was to take place behind the sea wall at the back of the wharf with mud from the dredge stiffened with the stone and mullock from the range railway after slips took place. The number 3 wharf was erected by 1912, number two wharf opened in 1913, and in 1914 the old number 4 wharf and buildings were demolished and replaced with a concrete wharf.
A photograph is available of the number 4 wharf during this reconstruction phase. The piles are reinforced concrete and the upper ends were apparently poured in-place in stages around four vertical iron rods. The iron reinforcing rods in the vertical posts were designed to interlock with the reinforcing rods in the concrete deck supports. Eight piles were placed between the sea wall area and the seaward edge of the wharf. Substantial wooden formwork was necessary to construct the reinforced concrete superstructure to support the decking.
The Harbour Board purchased the timber number 1 wharf in 1915, and replaced this with a concrete wharf within a year. The number 5 wharf was constructed in 1925 and was the entry/exit point for railway lines extending onto the wharf deck. Plans indicate that the number 5 wharf's deck had two pairs of railway tracks which merged at the junction with the number 4 wharf. The tracks curved onto the wharf deck at the southern end of the number 5 wharf, and the corner of the wharf was truncated parallel to this curve.
Number 6 wharf was completed in 1942 by the Allied Works Council. The design employed in constructing this wharf differed markedly to that used to construct numbers 1 to 5.: number 6 wharf was built with timber, supplemented with reinforced concrete.
Numbers 2 and 3 wharf sheds, clock tower and cargo crane The Wharf Sheds were constructed at various stages throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
The first to be built were numbers 2 and 3 wharf cargo sheds, constructed on the decks of the concrete wharves. The number 3 wharf was constructed in 1912, and it is suspected that the number 3 wharf shed was constructed in late 1912 or early 1913. The number 2 wharf was constructed in 1912–1913, and the original sheds on the old timber wharf were retained as long as possible prior to being demolished in 1913. The number 2 wharf shed was constructed soon after this demolition. The numbers 2 and 3 sheds were connected by a continuous roof by 1925 and probably earlier. Much of the infrastructure related to the number 2 and 3 sheds was constructed in about 1913, including the nearby railway tracks and two 10-ton cranes adjacent to the tracks and immediately behind sheds 1 and 2. Loading platforms were constructed behind number 2 wharf shed by 1925. The wharf sheds were elevated above the surrounding dock land and wharves. This raised configuration of wharf sheds was considered to be state-of-the-art design which allowed easy loading and unloading of goods to and from railway cars and into the storage sheds (facilitated by wharf shed platforms that aligned to the height of the rail cars). An "awning" was installed to the rear of the number 2 wharf shed in 1942. The wharf shed roofs were cleaned and repainted in 1947, and the whole of the roof cladding was replaced in 1954. The northern end of the number 2 wharf shed is referred to as the "old engine room" on a 1978 plan.
A clock tower was added to the end of the number 3 wharf shed in 1947–1948. On 14 September 1948, the Cairns Post included the following details of the clock:The four dials are each six feet in diameter and are driven by a single central unit. They cannot show a different time on each face.The bell weighs half a ton, is three feet in diameter and is struck by a 20 pound hammer.The clock is operated electrically, but does not depend on the continuity of the mains. Timekeeping is kept by a pendulum weighing 100 lbs., which pushes the mechanism round with a force capable of overcoming all normal obstacles, yet it is so delicately powered that it takes only a fraction of the current an ordinary electric torch would consume.The only part of the clock which would stop if electricity failed would be the bell, operated by a one quarter horse power motor directly connected to the mains. As soon as current is restored it will pick up the correct hour automatically. It is intended to silence the chimes between mid-night and 5.30 a.m.There are 27 gear wheels in the clock and about 30 bal bearings, which are heavy enough for hundreds of years of wear.Mr Franklin says that the clock is similar to that designed and installed by him for the Townsville Harbour Board in 1940 and others he has constructed during the last 25 years, though each successive clock has incorporated some refinement in design.Throughout the interwar years, a shed was built for each of the other berths. The sheds at berths 1–3 were joined together in one continuous line; and sheds 4–5 were built as one long structure. In 1943, shed number 6 was constructed.
In more recent times, viewing platforms were installed above the original roof line of number 2 wharf shed. The platforms were used as part of the terminal facilities for overseas passengers. These platforms were removed sometime in 1998 or 1999.
In 1984, number 1 wharf shed was demolished as part of the Trinity Wharf development, and in the 1990s number 4 wharf shed was demolished to provide greater wharf space. Wharf sheds 5 and 6 have also been demolished.
White's Shed