BROULEE

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Until the 1950’s most goods and produce moving to and from the NSW south coast was transported by ship. Except for Jervis Bay and Twofold Bay, shipping to the south coast was handicapped by a lack of safe harbours. Shipping had to make-do with small man-made harbours like Wollongong, Kiama and Ulladulla, river ports such as Batemans Bay, Narooma and Moruya (all of which had dangerous sand bars at their entrances), and make-shift harbours in the lee of any headland that gave shelter from dangerous southerly storms. One such makeshift harbour was Broulee Harbour in the lee of Broulee Island.

Today Broulee is a sleepy tourist town on the NSW south coast between Batemans Bay and Moruya, approximately 260km (140NM) sea miles south of Sydney. But it was not always so unimportant.

Broulee was, for a period, a busy port with as many as seven ocean going vessels anchored in its harbour at the one time (The Shipping Gazette and Sydney General Trade List,14 August 1844).

Broulee could now be described as a ghost port. Starting in the 1840’s, its harbour traffic moved to nearby Moruya and was eventually entirely replaced by road transport. Broulee’s history would be similar to that of many other ghost ports on the Australian coast.

A Brief History of Broulee

While the lee of Broulee Island offered protection from dangerous southerlies and south easterlies, it offered little protection from north easterlies. But as the 19th century progressed, the lee of this island became a port used for the transfer of agricultural produce to market and the delivery of people and manufactured goods to the surrounding area. Despite the lack of a fresh water supply, by the late 1830’s the need for a town at Broulee had become apparent.

This township was surveyed and gazetted in 1837. By the time land sales commenced in 1840 a post office was opened, mail was being delivered each week and the first court in the district was established. In 1841 Broulee was made the centre of a police district which covered the area from Jervis Bay to Eden.

Just seven km south of Broulee is the Moruya River. Its entrance was blocked by a dangerous bar. In 1841 a flood washed away this bar, making the river navigable. Settlement commenced up the river. Land at the new township of Moruya was offered for sale from 1848 and the Moruya town site was surveyed in 1850.

This new town, with its sheltered port and fresh water supply, quickly became the major township in the area. In 1859 the Broulee court, including the building, was relocated to Moruya. The Erin-go-Bragh Inn, built on Broulee Island, was also shifted to Moruya where it was first used as a store and later became the storekeeper's home.

Although ship traffic at Broulee had been greatly diminished by 1847, the discovery of gold nearby in the 1850’s -particularly at Araluen and Mogo - saw a modest resurgence of ship movements. This resurgence continued sporadically throughout the rest of the 19th century as gold strikes in the surrounding area came and went. The establishment of several timber mills on the Tomaga River in the late 19th century provided another resurgence in the port’s activity.

Starting in the 1920’s shell grit was collected from the northern side of the island for use in cement production in Sydney. After World War II, a motorised barge was used to transport the shellgrit from Broulee Island to a wharf in the Tomaga River, from where it was shipped to Sydney. To enable the barge to be loaded at the island, a 15-18 metre long jetty was built together with a light rail track that carried a small dump truck at what had become known as Shellgrit Bay. This shell grit trade however produced an insignificant number of reported shipping movements.

Broulee Shipping Statistics

A Microsoft Access database of 420 shipping movements to and from Broulee in the 19th century has been assembled from the shipping information in 19th century newspapers that are available on TROVE. Several things are noteworthy:
• The small size of the ships and the unspectacular nature of the cargoes has resulted in many shipping movements being omitted from the newspaper records.
• Although many shipping movements to and from Sydney were located, few movements to or from Melbourne or other Australian ports could be found.
• Few movements to or from New Zealand ports could be located.
• Opportunistic visits by whaling ships seeking supplies and ships seeking shelter from storms (such as the John Penn in 1879) are rarely recorded.
• No shipping movements between Broulee and other nearby south coast ports (such as Moruya and Batemans Bay) could be located. Many of these ships would be very small and often unregistered. For example, it is recorded that produce from Moruya was brought to Broulee by barges before the development of Moruya as a harbour in the 1840’s (Nelson J, Fisher R. 2015) but there are no details about these ships or their cargoes.

Agricultural Cargoes

Details of cargoes between 1840 and 1847 are infrequently recorded. Many of the ships stopped at other south coast ports both north and south of Broulee (e.g. Jervis Bay, Ulladulla, Batemans Bay, Moruya, Bermagui, Tathra, Eden), so some of the recorded cargo may have come from ports other than Broulee. Cargoes from Sydney to the south coast were mainly described as ‘sundries’, if described at all. Occasionally the ships were ‘in ballast’ i.e. carried no cargo. Although most ships offered passage there is little mention of passengers onboard. The cargoes most frequently mentioned were potatoes (38 occasions from 1840 to 1847), wheat (24) and bark (wattle bark, used for tanning; 8 occasions). Other cargoes with between 1 and 5 mentions each, are bacon, barley, butter, hides, sheepskins, timber, staves, onions, tallow and wool.

The ships carrying agriculture from Broulee

Some ships made regular trips to Broulee. This may be because they had some connection with the area or were owned by Broulee locals; the cutter 'Brothers', for example, was built in Broulee. These ships were all small cutters and schooners. The tonnage of 9 of the 10 ships known to have called into Broulee between 1840 and 1946 (The 'Adventure' (recorded to have visited Broulee 34 times), the 'Star' (26 times), 'Bards Legacy' (24), 'Waterwitch' (20), 'Harriet' (20), 'Jane Ann' (17), 'Elizabeth' (13), 'Georgina' (13), 'Brothers' (7) and 'Hope' (7)) averaged 30.1 tons. A ship of this tonnage would have an average length of 13.5 metres (44.3ft) and a beam of 3.7 metres (12.1ft) (Forbes, Jackson, n.d) which would give a theoretical maximum hull speed of 8.8 knots (Crunching Numbers, 2010). Therefore, the approximate minimum time to sail the 140NM (260km) from Sydney to Broulee, in favourable conditions with no stops, would be 24 hours. This time could variable considerably and there are records of this trip in small sailing ships taking up to a week (Hamon B. p71).

To Broulee for gold

There was an increase in shipping movements to Broulee after gold was discovered at Araluen in 1851 and later near Mogo and in many of the creeks around Broulee. Gold rushes occurred here intermittently in the second half of the nineteenth century and advertisements for travel to Broulee often targeted potential gold miners.

Steamers to Broulee

Steamers became increasingly common after the 1840’s and were able to keep to a timetable. Several Steamers ran sporadic passenger services to the south coast included Broulee. An example is the 'Shamrock', a 200-ton iron steamer which made 17 recorded trips to Broulee. This ship ran a passenger service to Melbourne and Launceston, often stopping at Broulee. This service started 18th November 1843 and ran irregularly till 1851. The main business of these steamers seemed to be the movement of passengers and, later, some timber.

Timber from Broulee

The Tomaga River enters Broulee Harbour on its north side. In the late 19th century the entrance of this river became the port of Tomakin with high quality hardwood timber, like spotted gum, stringy bark and black butt being taken by barges from mills upriver down to waiting ocean-going ships at the river entrance. There was no red cedar from Broulee as it does not grow south of Ulladulla. Timber was a non-perishable relatively low value cargo and the trade was dominated by small sailing ships until well into the 20th century. Several ships are reported to have been wrecked at the entrance to the Tomaga River in the late 19th century. The first timber mill on the Tomaga River was built in 1876 by the Sydney timber firm of Jennings and Pickering with a second mill established by Curtis and Kelsie at Tomakin in 1883 (Tomakin Timeline 2017). Five mills are reported to have been operated on the Tomaga River with another mill at Mogo (Magee 2012).

Shipbuilding at Broulee

No shipbuilding appears to have taken place at Broulee prior to 1847. A list of vessels registered at the port of Sydney (in 'The Sydney Morning Herald', Thursday 18 March 1847) includes no ships built at Broulee ('Brothers', listed below as being built at Broulee in 1845 does not appear on this list). After 1847 shipbuilding was undertaken along the Tomaga River and at the port of Tomago, just inside the river mouth (Magee 2012) with shipwrights utilising the locally available quality hardwood.

It is often assumed that timber ships were built in well-equipped shipyards, not in an isolated settlement with few facilities. Timber however is large, heavy and difficult to move so rather than have cut timber moved to a shipyard it was easier for shipwrights to build close to a timber mill. It was also important for the shipwrights to have their say in the selection of timber supplied, since so many pieces of special shape were required. The required ships chandlery would come from Sydney. Ships were built in the open, so no large building was required.

The following ships are reported to have been built at Broulee/Tomago:
'Brothers', 9-ton schooner, built 1845 by Thomas Ainsworth (Amsworth). Not registered in Sydney, it may have been registered elsewhere or never registered.
'Glenduart', 30-ton schooner, Master Piper, built 1847, owner P. Erwin.
'Susannah', 24-ton schooner, Master Green, built 1848, owner Green and Fitzwilliam.
'William Alfred', 117-ton schooner, Master Tinley, built 1848, owner Tinley and Fitzherbert.
'Agnes Napier', 35-ton schooner, Master Stevens, built 1848, owner James Easmon and Gee. James’ brother, John Easson, is also said to have built boats at nearby Moruya.
Un-named schooner built, 1878 at Jennings’ Tomago sawmill.
'C. Walker', 88-ton schooner, built 1881 by Charles Walker.
'Sophia Ann', screw steamer built at Tomakin, 1883
'Mayflower', three-masted auxiliary schooner of 149 tons, built 1885 by William Peat for Messrs Jennings, Pickering and Co.
'Florence Peat', 60-ton schooner built Tomakin, 1885.
'Annandale', 108-ton ketch, built 1899 for Messrs Alan Taylor and Co.
'Three Cheers', 120-ton schooner, built 1901 at Tomakin

This is almost certainly not a complete list of the ships built at Broulee and Tomago. Many more ships, barges and boats, especially small ones, may have been built on Broulee Harbour beach and beside the sawmills on the Tomago River, but no records have survived.

The rise and fall of the Port of Broulee is a story replicated in many of the early 19th century ports on the Australian coast: these smaller natural ports gradually being replaced by man-made harbours that better catered for larger steam powered ships; these steam powered ships, in turn, giving way to rail and road transport in the 20th century. The 13 ships wrecked in Broulee Harbour show beyond doubt that it was totally unsuitable as a port. Only the necessity to ship out local resources, initially agricultural and later gold, timber and shell grit forced traders to persevere with the port of Broulee.

(The above is part of a larger paper prepared by Dr Brad Duncan, a Senior NSW Maritime Heritage Archaeologist, and Greg Jackson and Pam Forbes, Marine Archaeologists and published in Recollections 21. See Recollections 21 for the full article and references.)

Illustration: The Erin Go Bragh Inn on Broulee Island, looking west by J. S. Prout 1843 (National Library of Australia).