QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

In the 1930s, Remora sucked up pig-iron (ships’ ballast) – twice – as well as naval shells and cannon balls from the City Reach of the river, and survived the discharges. She played an active part in life on the river too, in 1913 helping free the Orient Line’s ‘Orama’ from a mudbank. In a well-publicised effort over several days in 1926, she dredged around the Danish motorship Touraine which had stuck fast on shoals in the lower reaches, until five tugs were able to tow the 6,000 ton vessel free. The Master of Remora largely escaped blame when, on 29 June 1934, the dredge was involved in a collision with the coastal steamer Nalpa on the blind corner of the 180° bend of the river at Kangaroo Point. Laid-up after almost half-a-century of service, the hard-working Remora was towed out across Moreton Bay and scuttled in August 1963. She continues to serve to this day, accompanied by many of her retired Port of Brisbane colleagues, as one of the popular snorkelling and scuba-dive wrecks which form the artificial reef north of Tangalooma on Moreton Island.

Remora glides across a glassy Brisbane River; her design proved so successful that later Port of Brisbane dredges and barges, like Curlew , Echeneis and Morwong were built in Australia along similar lines. Image courtesy of State Library of Queensland

Remora Twin-screw steam-driven suction dredge. Dimensions: 1,045 tons; length: 213ft 6in (65m), beam 37ft 4in (11.4m), draft 15ft 11in (4.9m) Remora cost £46,000, said Mr Kirwan, the Treasurer of Queensland, in a statement to the Assembly on 24 July 1912, in which he confirmed that the state undertook to pay any necessary import duty to the Commonwealth. The Remora had an eventful life Down Under fol lowing her entry into service. A night-watchman was lost overboard in 1918; during a shipping strike the following year she was requisitioned to ferry 200 tons of flour to a bread-starved Townsville in Far North Queensland. Her capabilities meant that, in addition to the dredging work of Brisbane’s riverbed, she was also able to directly conribute to the reclamation of swampland at Lytton and Hamilton on its banks. One popular story of the day is of her pumps inadvertently swallowing two ‘shags’ (cormorants) The birds reportedly survived their passage through the ship’s plumbing and a couple of 90° turns and flew themselves away, after a decent interval to recover their injured pride – and, in one case, peck angrily at any well-intentioned crewmembers!

Below: Aerial view to the southwest of the Tangalooma Wrecks anchorage, with Remora indicated.

Main background: a snorkerller’s-eye view of the ghostly rusting bows of the Remora today.

19