Ahead of Progress

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 607, 8 March 1929, Page 8

Ahead of Progress

Millions Sunk in Harbour Works

STl\ ID.I XG ahead of progress Auckland has provided comfortable berthage for all its ships, and wharf-building has stopped for the time being. The Harbour Board is now picking up the stray ends and getting ready to push ahead its =£5,500,000 port-development scheme, as trade expands.

in money have been * spent in transforming the natural sweeps of Auckland's waterfront into a jagged strip of busy wharves; millions more will be spent within the next 25 years in keeping pace with swift trade expansion. A few years ago, when the accommodation for ships became congested, nearly threequarters of a million pounds were invested in a feverish drive of wharfconstruction and, in addition, many hundreds of thousands of pounds were directed toward , steady development.

Altogether the work of the past seven years represents an expenditure of well over £1,100,000.

The proposal to span Freeman’s Bay with a massive £130,000 viaduct, which the Harbour Board is considering, is but one of many comparatively minor works which the board is doing now that immediate saturation point has been reached in its wharf-building programme.

Big sums of money are being absorbed in other parts of the harbour, also, where jobs had been temporarily shelved on account of the urgency of the larger undertakings. Even while the board members are considering the merits of the viaduct scheme, dredges are clanking their noisy way through the boat harbour at St. Mary’s Bay and depositing their spoil on the new Western Wharf reclamation of 25 acres, and pile-drivers are pounding beams to the harbour floor along the eastern embankment in new breastwork formations. Work is also going on at the Eastern tidedeflector. These few jobs, which include the

! boat-liarbour wall itself and the easti ern tide-deflector, are described | lightly by the harbour authorities as “the stray ends” of their capital i works. They will cost just on i £170.000. In spending £610,000 on Prince's | Wharf, the Harbour Board served its ! clients and its ratepayers well. A big overseas liner now swings easily i from the stream toward the wharf. I and almost before the lines are out. I five or six giant cranes crawl upon it i from all sides and tower above its decks, ready to claw the cargo from its holds. £4OO A DAY Handling' time here has been reduced by about 50 per cent, by this close attention, and 2,000 tons of goods are now removed daily where previously 1,000 tons were considered to constitute a good day’s work. A ship lying idle at the wharf costs £4OO a day to maintain. The owners’ slogan, therefore, is “Speed.” Among the noted achievements which the Harbour Board has to show for its expenditure of £1,000,000 in seven years is the new ferry wharf at Devonport, which, at a cost of £65,000, was erected to supplement the old wooden structure driven in the ’eighties when the ferry trip was an expensive novelty. Only a few months ago the new vehicle ferry landing on the city side was opened for traffic. Costing £50,000, this jetty reduced the vehicle journey across the harbour by half. A new wharf at Onehunga absorbed £74,000 of the board’s funds, and now lies comparatively little used on account of the change in policy of certain shipping interests. Western Wharf has been built and equipped at a cost of £125,000. AUCKLAND LEADS THE WORLD Auckland was the first port in the world to adopt a complete ferro-con-crete construction plan. Its wharves are everlasting—free from the ravages of the dread toredo, the marine insect against which no wood seems to be immune. By its persistent attacks, wooden piles in semi-tropical waters are reduced to an average life of 10 years. Kauri, Australian hardwoods, jarrah, totara, bluegum and other species of specially chosen hard timbers have gone the way of all woods when left to the mercies of the toredo in the Waitemata Harbour. The Harbour Board now looks ahead and plans for the next 25 years —according to the rapidity of port expansion—a construction programme costing £5,500,000 and providing new wharves along the eastern embankment, with better facilities for quick handling of the port’s growing trade. As prosperity envelopes the Dominion, and the products of its thriving industries pass in increasing volume over the Auckland wharves, who would vision the port a hundred years hence? Will the black wharves then scowl skyward at aircraft competing in the race Home with our golden fleece, or will the waterways of the world retain their commercial, supremacy?