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            The 1912-built timber-hulled Sydney Harbour ferry Lady Denman alongside @ Balmain Ferry Maintenance Yard.  It is June 1979 - and at the time of the photo this historic vessel had literally just been retired from service a day or two prior.  She is still flying her 'paying off pennants' (toilet paper) as put up by her crew on the final day.

Lady Denman was one of five identical sisters built for the then Balmain New Ferry Company between 1910 and 1914.  Denman herself was built at Huskisson on the NSW South Coast by shipbuilder Joseph Dent - presumably from local South Coast hardwood - and would go on to work on Sydney Harbour for a prodigious and impressive 67 years.

These vessels - originally built as coal-burning steam ferries - were principally tasked with working around the Balmain Peninsula and Lane Cove River parts of Sydney Harbour.   In later years they would become ubiquitous everywhere - and were common sights across all the North Shore wharves and anywhere apart from Manly that ferry services travelled.  Many today will still remember them well and fondly.

Following retirement she was rescued from the usual fate of being broken up and instead was towed down the coast to Huskisson - back to where she had originally been built.   This tale is a long and very eventful story in itself.

She can be seen there today as the centrepiece of the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum in Huskisson - and remains the final large wooden Sydney ferry still in existence out of all the scores of them that once plied Sydney Harbour. (Sydney Heritage Fleet's Kanangra, by the way, is steel-hulled).

For anybody travelling through the Jervis Bay region on the NSW South Coast, this museum is worth a visit.

As a final irony, Lady Denman had been replaced in 1979 by the newly-constructed Lady Street as built by the NSW State Dockyard.  Very sadly Lady Street was prematurely retired (still in good condition) and subsequently cut up for scrap at Goat Island in 2005.  Lady Denman in the end would outlive her replacement!

Stuart McPherson photo.    June 1979.

Taken on: June 9, 2021

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1979

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