Woy Woy residents targeted for heritage walk

Woy Woy residents who attend the Kincumber Rotary Club's Shipbuilders Heritage Walk on May 5 may get a half-price ferry trip to Davistown.

Those who buy a "four villages passport" from the club will be able to travel the return leg of the ferry trip free of charge.

Co-ordinator Mr Peter Rea said the history of the area shows that for tens of thousands of years the waterways extending north from Broken Ba to Brisbane Water, supported human existence.

The area has thousands of aboriginal middens, testimony to a life centred around the waterways and to the seafood diet the people enjoyed.

Between the 1820s to the end of World War II, the forests supplied a huge shipbuilding industry, he said.

"On Brisbane Water over 500 registered vessels were constructed, plus an un-calculable number of smaller craft.

"The Shipbuilders Memorial Project started a decade ago as a dedication to the extraordinary shipbuilding heritage of the Brisbane Water," he said.

"At this stage the Shipbuilders Memorial consist of a number of plinths by sculptor John Woulfe of stainless steel and the finest Gosford sandstone.

"Each plinth is dedicated to one the shipbuilders of the area.

"The astronomer and superintendent of the Government Observatory at Parramatta, James Dunlop (1793 - 1848) is also remembered by a plinth adjacent to the historic house, Bora-Bora.

"The current Memorial extends along a cycle/walkway on the waterfront reserves adjacent to the suburbs of Kincumber, Yattalunga, Saratoga to Davistown.

"The Memorial also extends for a short distance each way on the Davistown waterfront."

Mr Rea said there were plans to extend the memorials to the Palermo Shipyard site at Daleys Point, being in memory of HMAS Patrica Cam built there and sunk in action during World War II.

Information plaques and smart-phone apps would provide information about shipbuilding and general history, indigenous culture as well as the water and waterfront environment along the way.

SOURCE:

Media release, 20 Mar 2019

Peter Rea, Kincumber Rotary