Valuable Asset Idle

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 58, 31 May 1927, Page 8

Valuable Asset Idle

Untidy Feature of the Waterfront

IJ/ATEEFRONT land in Auckland city is a valuable commodity, but that has not prevented the Auckland Harbour Board from allowing the old dock site, at the foot of Albert and Hobson Streets, to stand untenanted for 13 years. Plans to build upon the dock site administrative headquarters in keeping with the board’s power and prestige have been conceived at intervals, but there is still nothing to suggest that the section will not lie empty for another generation or two.

> AGK into the infancy of the port of Auckland goes the history of the old dock site. Originally it was tide-washed foreshore underneath Point Smale, the western promontory sheltering Commercial Bay, which is now lower Queen Street. Plans for two docks to serve the growing port were evolved by Mr. J. M. Carruthers, engineer from 1871

to IS7B, who suggested that a small dock should be built at the foot of Albert Street, and a larger one at Point Britomart, at the spot where a traffic-policman now controls traffic concentrating on Anzac Avenue. The smaller dock duly materialised, and was opened on August 20, 1878, but the other proposal was deferred, and another site at Devonport was finally adopted. lona and Triumph The steamer lona, one of the Northern Company’s earliest craft, was the first vessel to use the graving dock.

Another early job was the Triumph, a Shaw, Savill and Albion pioneer freighter, wrecked on Tiri when outward bound from Auckland. The need for a dock to accommodate bigger vessels became apparent, and £150,000 was spent on the construction of the dock at Calliope Point, Devonport. Calliope Point took its name from a warship that visited the Waitemata in the forties, and it was just a coincidence that a later H.M.S. Calliope was present to steam into the new dock on the opening day in February, 1888. Just a month later the same ship made history by escaping from Apia harbour in the teeth of a hurricane, but that is another story. In November, 1906, the liner Mamari, partly overturned as the Callipoe dock was emptying. Two men were killed, and 30 others injured, but that, also, is by the way. Meanwhile, the harbour board was pursuing various projects on the city side of the harbour, and in 1914 undertook the extension of Quay Street and the reclamation of the old graving dock, which was replaced by a slip at Freeman’s Bay. Hopes Deferred A modern building to replace the board’s existing offices, which cost £6,624 when they were built in ISS485, was then planned, but was never materialised. After the war the board offered the site for a city war memorial, but the generous offer was declined, so „ the board instead contributed £5,000* toward the war memorial museum. It also distributed £2,563 among employees who had been on war service, and built a graceful little memorial beacon as a tribute to its own fighting men. Until something is done with the adjacent dock site, however, the memmorial will not have the advantage of ail attractive setting. At present the dock section is let to the city council, rent-free, as a parking area. Plans for a combined Customs and Harbour Board administrative building were revived last year, but nothing developed, and the dock site remains unoccupied, an untidy feature of the waterfront.