Whyalla Maritime Museum: Whyalla

The people of Whyalla are rightly proud of their shipbuilding past, so much so that they went to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. Back in the mid-eighties the Whyalla Jubilee 150 Committee bought back more than 680 tonnes of maritime history, the HMAS Whyalla. After years of service as a navy corvette and later as a lighthouse tender, The Whyalla steamed back into town. She was then hauled two kilometres inland in a community project, which gives new meaning to the term "dry dock".

"HMAS Whyalla was the very first ship built at BHP shipyards in Whyalla and she was a Bathhurst Class Corvette and, well, she was engaged in some coastal surveying of Papua New Guinea and did some convoys for Australian and allied merchant men and mainly the Pacific during World War Two".

Seen in quiet, dry dock several kilometres from where she was built, it's hard to imagine that she was once straffed by Japanese zeros. And old skippers would certainly be surprised, to say the least, at the view from the Bridge today. The Whyalla was built in 1941, the start of a massive ship building program which began as part of the Australian war effort and extended right through to the late '70s.

"And from those shipyards out there, how many vessels were built?"

"Well, altogether sixty six, and a lot of them served as BHP fleet"

"So many of the ships that were built here over that 38 year period would still be out there on the high seas?"

"Er, some of them, some of them especially those built in the late nineteen seventies"

As you wander around the decks, you get a sense of how crowded life would have been on board a wartime Corvette sailing through the humid waters of the tropics.

"So this is the engine room?"

"Yes, this is the engine room and now we enter the top section"

"So how many people actually worked on the boat?"

"Well, this ship was designed for a crew of eighty seven people"

"Eighty seven people, so it must have been very, very crammed?"

"Yes it was, and sometimes it would be joined by landing parties like commandos"

While the captains quarters were by no means spacious, spare a thought for the rest of the crew.

"These are the sleeping quarters?"

"Yes exactly, this way"

"The showers?"

"Showers and all hatches opened"

"because it must have got very incredibly steamy and hot with the boilers as well?"

At any one time, up to forty men would bunk in here, and with many of the hatches open, there was no such thing as privacy, but the old faded photos point to a camaraderie forged under the stresses of war. The Whyalla often worked in heavily mined waters which were much closer than many Australians realised.

"Altogether, seventy mines between roughly Sydney and Spencer Gulf"

"Spencer Gulf, right"

From this first vessel, a ship building industry was born and she later worked in Port Phillip Bay in Victoria where she was renamed the RIP. Now she rests in peace alongside the Tanderra Room which outlines how the BHP Shipyards grew, producing massive carriers used to take our Iron Ore and Steel to the rest of the world.

The Whyalla Maritime Museum is open daily from 10am to 4pm.

Admission is:
$6.60 for adults
$5.50 for concession
$3.30 for children.

For more information email: info@postcards.sa.com.au