Photo: Craig Greenhill Source: The Daily Telegraph

Earlier in the month we posted about New York harbor’s “graveyard of ships”.  Yesterday the Daily Telegraph featured an interesting article about Sydney’s ship cemetery – an abandoned wrecking yard in Homebush Bay where several wooden barges and at least five ships slowly rot or rust away.

What secrets lie in Sydney’s ship cemetery?

In 1966 the old Maritime Services Board leased part of the bay to firms to moor vessels before they were brought up a slipway and torn apart.

A decade later, as the Harbour’s maritime industry declined, the yard was closed. Boats unable to be towed out to sea and scuttled were left to rot.

Among the vessels that now double as giant steel pots for the creeping mangroves include the HMAS Karangi, a boom defence vessel that was based in Darwin during part of WWII and survived the Japanese attacks on the city in 1942 and 1943.

Adjacent is the SS Heroic, a steel steam tug commandeered by the British Navy in WWI which helped rescue the freighter Allara after it was torpedoed off Sydney in WWII.

On the other side of the bay is the largest wreck, the 70m Sydney to Newcastle collier the Ayrfield, which was also commandeered during WWII.

“A lot of people would not realise the importance of the wrecking yards,” Planning Department senior heritage officer Tim Smith said.