Baragoola Month Ending 16th March 2013

Upcoming events

Planning and preparation has started for our next open day (date TBA).

Historic Manly ferry events this week

None!

Fundraising Information

We need to raise an additional sum of cash in the next couple of months and all donations (or interest

free loans even) are very welcome. Donations $2 and above are tax deductible so please consider

making a donation to help save this very last original Manly ferry for generations to come.

We have 15 boxes of Cadbury fundraiser chocolates (mostly Freddos!) and are looking to our members

to take a box or two. These go great in your workplace and sell themselves with no effort at all. Contact

us if you can take a box. These are a great little item for us and are ‘easy money’ but we do need our

members to get behind this one to make it successful.

Committee News Much work has been done in the last few weeks around the reorganisation of the committee and a

catching up of all the work that needed to be done, I’m pleased to report this has now nearly all been

completed. It’s also the reason why there hasn’t been a newsletter (so this one will be a “bumper

edition”.

Completed items:

Authorised representatives of the Association have been updated with Fair trading and Roads &

Maritime

Work boat re-registered (it had a dependency on the RMS item) – good news as we can finally

start getting material on board – this has slowed us down quite a bit and there’s a backlog of

timber and cement to come over

Public Officer details updated – we’ve added in two further people who can update Fair trading

and put in procedures so that we don’t run into handover problems again if the position is

vacated

Volunteer insurance negotiated (cheaper than the last time it was discussed)

Loss insurance renegotiated – I’m pleased to report this is $300 cheaper than last year following

some intensive negotiations with our insurance broker

Finances

Our bank balance increased by $40 this week.

From the editor

Our postal address: PO Box 374 Crows Nest, NSW, 1585 Please ensure you address any correspondence to this address in future.

Our sites

Have you visited our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ManlyFerry ? It’s updated (sometimes several times a day) and is one of our primary methods of communicating with the public at large. We’ve got over 100 ‘likes’ so far! There’s quite a few videos posted there as well. Our main source of important information is our own site at http://baragoola.com.au For people with an interest in Sydney’s ferries (past and current) we have a sister site at http://www.ferriesofsydney with a very activite community forum.

Souvenir items

Recently we introduced some new promotional items and they are in limited quantities so if you want one you’ll need to get in quickly. For the first time we have caps and indeed we had to refresh the order twice to cope with demand! If you want an item, send your details (name and address and what you want) in an email to media@baragoola.com.au. Our limited edition Baragoola 2013 desk calendars are now in stock, printed on glossy card these area great last minute gift idea for Xmas! The calendars feature twelve shots (one for each month) of Baragoola throughout her life. Only $15 including postage - hurry and order yours today as stocks are strictly limited!

Prices – Mugs $20 including delivery, key rings $20 including delivery and caps $30 including delivery. A special offer of the PJ&MSS Co mug, cap and keyring can be purchased as a set for $60 for the set.

Keyring (with LED light)

Bellubera and South Steyne

Baragoola in PTC colours

South Steyne

PJ & MSS logo from the 1920s

This month

As this newsletter is an aggregation of the last four weeks, I’ll break things down into sections and it is

impressive how much work has been completed!

We’ll start with electrical and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Diederick who has made inroads on

cabling all bar four of the lights in the main cabin – this has made quite a difference and I’m guessing

Baragoola looks great at night from the water now. A great advertisement for us

All the lights are being rewired with a heavier and compliant cable for safety and so that we can

eventually pass the requisite survey requirements. We are still following the original cable layout

although there will be a redo of the cable runs – there isn’t a need to have four or five different switches

for each section – they’ll either be ‘all on’ or ‘all off’ in each saloon.

After having a rather dim forward area for so very long this part of the main cabin looks great all lit up

and the yellow lighting really compliments the colour scheme beautifuuly!

Before we hold our next open day we need to change the way we board visitors; part of this includes

creating a very solid and safe set of boarding stairs on the port side utilising the middle set of loading

gates. The guys have drawn up a detailed plan of how to accomplish this but before they are built

there’s quite a bit of preparation works that needs to be completed. As these stairs will eventually cover

part of the deck and the metal bulwarks it is important that these particular areas be dealt with and

repaired before the more or less permanent stairs go down that will make accessing the underlying

material impossible. To this end, work has progressed on rust removal and repair of the gate area and it

has been a big job taking several weeks so far – with much more to be done.

With the initial rust removal done (and there was quite a lot – this area is probably the worst on the

ferry) and a first coat of anti rust paint down we can now do the necessary repairs before giving the area

it’s three coats of green paint – and not forgetting to restore the white line externally as well! The deck

then needs to be cleaned up and semi-permanent cladding placed down to protect it and prevent rain

water entering the vessel here. As well, a section of the bulwarks on either side of the gate entry is also

being stripped and restored – as this will be our main entrance we need to make a good impression and

have it looking good! As part of this rotten handrails have been removed (with more to be done) and the

new timber will need to be laid down and shaped.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be utilising all available volunteers to push through the work in this

area as it is a fairly critical path item to allow us to safely board members of the public and (of course)

our own volunteers – it’ll be great to retire the existing ladder to be no more than an access method to

get to the tinnie!

As you can see there’s a fair bit of rotten timber to be removed. We’ll also start work on the two loading

ramps that are athwart the middle lower deck gates – these were at some stage replaced and the

modern timber has not stood up well. These two sliding doors here are also rather poor and will need

replacing or repairing. In all a lot of work to be done to improve the access!

Hull work has been proceeding as well with an enormous amount of the Engine Room now completely

stripped back, treated and cleaned and patched as required, Cleaning in the Engine Room is also apace

and the removal of three decades of dust, grime and grease has made quite an improvement and

brightened things up considerably.

Just a simple wash down can make a world of difference! The equipment in the Engine Room has also

been receiving this treatment – the next image is of the salt water heat exchanger – interestingly the old

UTA paint strips off easily and reveals the opaline blue underneath which all the equipment will be

eventually repainted in. It looks like the painting of the vessel when in government ownership was

rudimentary and they used lower quality paint and applied it directly over dirt and grease.

Back upstairs now where a small amount of work has been proceeding in the main lower deck cabin. The starboard middle doorway suffered badly during the time Goola was laid up and was not being cared for and a lot of rainwater ran down the doors and affected the underlying metal deck. This was overlaid with timber decking which rotted out and trapped water – rot and rust are not a good combination and to prevent the rot getting in to the surrounding timber we removed the remnant deck plank. Although not treated, this area will now be dry all the time and fresh rot cannot redevelop!

Believe it or not, even this small section of the ferry took three people two weeks to do – an indication of just how much work needs to be put in to accomplish the goal of restoring Baragoola back to a useable ship again – it’s also why we are always looking out for new volunteers – there’s an enormous amount to be done – not just on restoration and rebuilding tasks but also maintaining what we have completed so far; without maintenance those areas will start slipping again. So – got a few hours a month you can donate us?

I’m happy to report that all four door treads in the main cabin are now stripped, cleaned up and polished – this is a small thing in the grand scheme of things but makes quite a difference to their respective areas – again, this was a task that took two weeks to accomplish but looks great! There are, of course, a few more to do And then there are the window handles…….

The new treads for the second half of the aft staircase are now on board and awaiting installation. Once these are in we’ll give a final paint touchup to these stairs and they’ll be complete. Again, this is a job that will take a day for the laying of the treads and another day for painting – we’re about to make a big effort with interior painting so this is a task where we’ll need some extra hands – a relatively easy job so if you can help out let us know so we can commence planning. The main area for painting is the upper deck – in particular the deckhead and once that’s done the lighting can be installed and that area will be well on the way to be used in a commercial sense – which in turn means more money available for the restoration which also means an acceleration in the job – everything feeds in to the long term goal of an operational vessel and the main limiter at this point is manpower – so if you want to see Baragoola up and running the best thing you can do is offer a few hours every now and then. Ernie too has been busy cleaning up the brass treads on the stairs into the Battery Compartment.

He also laid some replacements for the missing treads for safety – unfortunately they don’t match the originals Those would be rather difficult to come by though. These stairs will look good when finished with polished treads, blue hand rails and blue cut in next to the treads and will make for an impressive entrance to Baragoola’s lower areas. Back upstairs briefly – Peter has been very busy beavering away at the deckhead on the upper deck (well, at least I gather that from the pieces of rotten timber populating the area!) and he’s now replaced most of the poor deckhead with new inserts – it looks great too. Peter is one of the crew who’s often about during the week so if you want to come down on a weekday let us know and we’ll check his schedule. I’m pretty sure he’d appreciate a hand with the critical work he’s doing. I also suspect he’d appreciate a few tall people as well! And now on to engineering…..

The port battery box has been demolished – it suffered over a long period of time and will need to be rebuilt but in the meantime removing it has vastly improved the corner of the Control Room it was located in. The old one will be kept for a while as it’ll form the template for a replacement.

Much work has been done on maintenance on the port Gardner as well, although it’s working it’s not as good as it could be – both Ernie and Peter have been performing work on it with Peter procuring replacement parts for the fuel pump. He sourced these from England – even with freight the parts are far, far cheaper than purchasing them from the Gardner stockiest in Brisbane.

Big news for the equipment spaces though is that No. 2 English Electric is now under active repair. Again, Peter has procured the injectors for this engine and work on returning it to active service has commenced. Ernie spent some time cleaning up the covers to this engine.

It’s been partially stripped as well so you can clearly see the inner workings.

We will be working again next Saturday (the 23rd) and there will be a few around during the week – check with us in advance if you want to drop down and lend a hand. A list of the early morning tasks will be sent out with the usual invitation on Wednesday and we welcome new hands on board – hope to see you on Baragoola on Saturday! If you are on Facebook you can follow us at https://www.facebook.com/ManlyFerry For general business you should call our message bank on 02 9294 3168 and leave a message – we’ll return your call pretty quickly as this is checked daily.

Historical Images

A near new Burra Bra in November 1908

Burra Bra later in life at Circular Quay