Illawarra Harbour was the name of a port that was to have been constructed on Lake Illawarra in New South Wales, Australia. The port scheme commenced around 1888. The port was to have been developed by a company known as Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation. A tender was accepted, in late 1892, and work commenced on a breakwater at the entrance of the lake at Windang, but that work ceased during the second half of 1893. In 1895, a railway was constructed on the western side of the lake. In 1898, a select committee hearing was told that the vast majority of shares in the company were in fact owned by an English-domiciled company, Illawarra Harbour and Railway Corporation. A planned dredged channel across Lake Illawarra and wharves on the company's land, at Elizabeth Point, near Tallawarra Point, were not constructed, no coal was ever shipped, and the mine and jetty scheme was abandoned in 1902.
The Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation attempted to sell a sub-division of 288 allotments in 1897, without much success; land sales seem to have been closer to its real objective than was the establishment and operation of a port. The companies associated with the port scheme made some questionable related-party transactions involving directors of those companies. The only parts of the Illawarra Harbour port scheme that were ever used were some land, where the Dapto Smelting Works—a venture closely associated with the port scheme—was situated, after 1895, and the railway, after being connected to the smelter site and its sidings by another short railway line. The smelter closed, in 1905, due in part to the absence of a nearby port, which affected the feasibility of smelting low-grade ores.
History
Origins In July 1888, a group known as 'the Great Dapto Syndicate' bought some land, known as the Lakelands Estate, on the western shore of Lake Illawarra, with the stated intention of developing a port there. The Great Dapto Syndicate, included Thomas Andrew de Wolf and Andrew Armstrong, both of whom were later directors of Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation. Another member of the syndicate was Benjamin Fink, who may have provided the financing.
Early years John Sutherand introduced a private member's bill (Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation Bill 1889) in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in April 1889. The bill had a first reading, but, after being referred to a select committee, did not proceed further. A new bill was introduced by Michael Chapman, in April 1890. The Act also defined routes for railway and a southern branch line, and it gave the company access to land—mainly owned by others—for the railway corridors.
The bill gave the company a right to reclaim land over the lake bottom, using dredged material, and then to purchase that new land from the government at market rate, minus the cost of the work to reclaim the land. This right, seen by some as highly unusual, was one focus of debate over the bill.
The enabling legislation was passed in December 1890, and the Lakelands Estate was purchased by a new company, Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation. Approval was obtained to quarry stone from Windang Island, to use in a breakwater, in late 1891. A tender was accepted, in late 1892, from a contractor, Brand and Drybrough—owners of the Cleveland Foundry and Slipway in Townsville—for £58,000, and some limited work was done on part of a breakwater—a 'tie bar' between the land on the southern side and the island—at the entrance of the lake at Windang, by July 1893.
Rival schemes and other ports
There was a rival port scheme, based on a plan to dredge Tom Thumb Lagoon, and make a new entry to it, via the existing Wollongong Harbour. In September 1889, an act of parliament was enacted, which established the Wollongong Harbour Trust and gave it control of the existing small port at Wollongong as well as the neighbouring Tom Thumb Lagoon. The new Trust was advised by Sir John Coode. He advised against dredging the lagoon. Instead, Coode proposed a scheme involving two breakwaters enclosing an area of water outside the existing port, reclaimed land, and multiple jetties within the safe anchorage. The Trust adopted that revised scheme, in March 1891. Some work commenced, but there were doubts about its feasibility, and the scheme failed to achieve adequate debt funding and was abandoned.
By 1890, as well as the existing port at Wollongong Harbour, there were ocean jetty coal ports at Austinmer, Bulli, Coalcliff, Bellambi, and Port Kembla. With the exception of the Coalcliff mine jetty and Wollongong Harbour, all these ports had a connection to the South Coast railway line, although all were owned by various mines and not necessarily prepared to load coal from other mines.
In late 1894, there was some agitation for construction of a breakwater to make safe harbour at Bellambi—a scheme known as 'Bellambi Harbour'— to protect its two coal jetties. One of those jetties was so badly damaged, during a gale in February 1898, that it was never used thereafter.
With the exception of Port Kembla, none of the ports were ideally situated to suit loading coal from mines at the southern end of the coalfield. At the time, Port Kembla—much like the other ocean jetty coal ports—was exposed to rough seas during bad weather. The large protected and safe anchorage, now known as the "Outer Harbour" did not then exist.
The only other coal port on a coastal lake was Lake Macquarie in the northern coalfields. It could only be used by relatively small ships, and dredging was needed to keep the Swansea Channel, at its entrance, deep enough for those small ships.
The planned port In a newspaper interview, in January 1893, Mr. L. R. Gundlach, C.E., an engineer, working for the company's consultant engineers, summarised the planned port works at Lake Illawarra, as follows:
"At the entrance to the Lake there will be two parallel breakwaters, the northern and the southern, each 27 chains in length, with a southern training bank of about 24 chains, and a northern one 13 chains long; also a tie-bank of about 20 chains, connecting Windang Island with the breakwaters. There will be an opening about 500 ft wide between the ends of the breakwaters. The outer ends of the breakwaters will be 12ft, and the shore ends 7 ft above high water-mark — their width on top will be 15 ft. They will be built of rubble blocks not less than 4 tons in weight, with 10-ton blocks on the outer portion. The length of the channel through the Lake will be approximately 3½ miles, and its bottom width will vary from 150 ft to 300 ft. There is intended to be a depth of 22 ft of water at low tide along the whole course of the channel. The proposed shipping basin at Tallawarra Point will have an average length of 30 chains, by 13 chains in width, and will give room for 4 double-sided jetties each 450 ft long, placed between 2 single-sided jetties each 1000 ft long. In connection with the harbour it is intended to construct about 8 miles of railway, of Government gauge, with all necessary sidings and other adjuncts for the transit and shipment of coal from the properties of the Corporation".
By July 1893, with the work under contract, the channel width had been reduced to 100 feet wide. The difficulties of the entrance works were apparent with the need to build breakwaters extending into the sea to a depth of 26 feet of water. The estimated cost of all the harbour works was £150,000.
The routes of a railway to the planned port and a southern branch line were defined, in the 1890 enabling act. Both were to originate on coal lands; the main line at the proposed site of the Ocean Steam Colliery—on coal land that was held by the Illawarra Harbour and Land Company—and the southern branch at a mining property owned by J.B. Watt. Their routes would have allowed subsequent connections to mine sidings of other mines in the part of the Illawarra escarpment to the west of Lake Illawarra.
Interruption Work at the lake entrance ceased at some point during the second half of 1893. In February 1894, the two principals of the harbour works contractor, David Jollie Brand and David Leggatt Dryborough, petitioned to have Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation wound up, presumably to recover money that they had not been paid for their work to date. In October 1894, "A portion of the plant recently used in connection with the Lake illawarra Harbourworks is being removed from Windang Island to Shellharbour:"
In 1893, Australia had entered a serious economic depression, which involved a banking crisis. By the beginning of 1895, it appeared that the port scheme had stalled. In a select committee hearing in 1898, Thomas Andrew de Wolf, stated that company's funding problems around this time related to, "One of the largest shareholders having a great interest in this company was the Mercantile Finance Company of Melbourne" and added that Melbourne company was, "Very badly insolvent". Mercantile Finance Company—nearly half its shares were owned by Benjamin Fink—had collapsed and a number of irregularities were found by its liquidator. Fink held a major interest in the Illawarra Harbour port venture, and was publicly associated with it, at least prior to his financial troubles.
Revival Late in 1895, a select committee was told that, while the original purpose had been as a port for coal, there was now a plan to erect a smelter for sulphide ores. One envisaged advantage of the smelter to the port would be that ships would arrive ballasted with ore, for smelting, and depart carrying cargoes of coal.
Further, it was stated that the interests associated with the new smelter would guarantee the debentures of the land company, allowing construction of a railway to the site of the future wharves. The outcome was that the port scheme received further impetus. The Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation Act Amendment Act was passed, in December 1895, and it extended the time constraints on completion of parts of the port scheme. The chairman of the select committee examining the new legislation, John Cash Nield, was, by 1898, a director of Illawarra Harbour and Land Corporation. Neild was still in 1898 a member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, and he continued to be one until around 1900, after which he became a senator for New South Wales in the newly established Australian Senate.
The Dapto Smelting Works was constructed, by the Smelting Company of Australia, among whose directors was Thomas Andrew de Wolf. The first managing director of that company was John Howell. The smelter commenced operation in December 1897.
Later construction
Railway lines
Under the original Act of 1890, the company had five years in which to complete a railway. It had been a condition of the Amendment Act of 1895, "That one of the railways mentioned in section thirty of the Principal Act shall be constructed and brought into use within the term of one year from the 20th December one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five". In other words, giving the company another year to complete a railway.
A standard gauge railway, 6½ miles long, was constructed from south-west of Mount Kembla, to near Elizabeth Point, just to the north of Tallawarra Point, where the company owned land and intended to develop the port and a township. It was essentially the railway that was defined in Schedule E of the 1890 enabling act, but the southern branch line, also included in that schedule, was never built.
The railway crossed, but was also connected to, the South Coast railway, a little south of Dapto railway station, around where Fowlers Road crosses the railway line now. It opened in December 1895. There was a signal box, known as Lake Illawarra Crossing, to control the crossing.