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Heritage Register

Customs Marine Centre, Neutral Bay, NSW

Finance ID Number DFD-61019

Commonwealth Heritage List Place ID Number

105249

OwnershipOwned by Finance on behalf of the Commonwealth. The property is currently leased to the Australian Customs Service.

View of the Harbour from Customs Marine Centre.Source: Godden Mackay Logan 2008.

Location

The Customs Marine Centre is located on the waterfront at the southern end of Ben Boyd Road, Neutral Bay, Sydney, NSW.

Landscape Setting Customs Marine Depot is located on the waterfront of Neutral Bay in the North Shore of Sydney. Development of the area was initially limited by the steep topography of the site.

View looking west along the foreshore, adjacent to the southern facade of the administration office building, towards the workshop/boat shed. Source: Godden Mackay Logan 2008.

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Description of the Place The Customs Marine Centre depot is on two levels, with two buildings on the lower level nearest the water. These are an office building with training rooms, dating from the 1960s, and a workshop and slipway building. The office building has a flat steel roof, and a concrete frame with brick panel walling. The workshop has a skillion corrugated iron roof, with a steel and timber frame. Various elements of the Halvorsen buildings have been used in its construction, including some framing, interior flooring and slipway elements. On the upper level of the site are garden beds and car parks; in one garden there is an 1898 headstone moved from another site.

Located in one corner of the workshop building is the pump. It consists of a wooden pump barrel, approximately 120 cm high, with an inside diameter of 15 cm, with an iron spindle, now immoveable, in the centre. The base is now firmly encased in the concrete apron of the major slipway at the Customs deport. A commemorative plaque, as detailed above, is affixed to the woodwork. The pump is the earliest visible feature of waterfront industry at Neutral Bay and is of exceptional interest as an example of handmade pumping technology from the period.

Other items of significance include slipway remnants (used by Halvorsens and earlier shipbuilders) along the inter-tidal zone on the foreshore, and the remains of the seawall, built of the woolstore's squared sandstone blocks featuring a pecked finish. The top and toe of the seawall are covered in concrete. Also, on the cliff face, there is a range of artefacts affixed to the sandstone including iron bolts, brackets and spikes, iron and terracotta pipes and sections of concrete.

There may be archaeological evidence of earlier boatsheds on the site, especially under the reclaimed foreshore, and jetty remnants under the water.

The use of the site by the Customs Service represents a continuation of the area's maritime activities which have been carried out for over 150 years. It is one of the few remaining maritime industrial sites on the north shore of Sydney Harbour.

There is potential archaeological evidence adjacent to the site boundaries: under the car park to the east, and below the low water mark in the harbour.

The top-level entrance to the workshop building.

View looking southeast from the car park. The Port Jackson fig has high cultural landscape value, and features in all historic photos of the site.

View looking west, along the top garden on the upper level of the site.

Source: Godden Mackay Logan 2008.

History and Summary of Uses of the PlaceIn 1842 the young English stockbroker, financier, entrepreneur and adventurer Benjamin Boyd arrived in Sydney on his yacht the Wanderer and speedily became one of the colony's business and

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social leaders. Within a few years he was prominent as a banker, a pastoralist controlling vast holdings and a founder of a large-scale whaling operation.

In the course of these activities he established himself at Neutral Bay - first as a resident, the lessee of the substantial property Craignathan (on the waterfront, facing what is now Hayes Street; it is now demolished but a stone wall possibly associated with it survives and is within RNE record 14699) - and then erecting a large three-storey woolstore and woolscour adjacent. The latter was fed by a stream which flowed from the heights above and was retained by a masonry dam before exhausting into the harbour only a few metres away.

Boyd was able to have the wool from his pastoral properties shipped directly from coastal ports to Neutral Bay, stored and treated there, and shipped out again directly for export.

A pump was installed presumably to provide fresh water for the woolscour and other waterfront activities, which were some distance from the stream which fed the dam. It was no doubt placed in the way of a substantial flow from a branch of the above stream, some of which still is visible on the rock face behind the pump, and which probably still percolates through the rock seams into a sump for the pump.

By the end of the depression-ridden 1840s, Boyd's Australian enterprises had failed. He abandoned them to try his luck on the California goldfields, but was unsuccessful. In 1851 on the way back to Australia in the Wanderer, he went ashore in the Solomon Islands and disappeared. He is believed to have been murdered by the islanders. Returning with the news, the Wanderer was wrecked on the bar of Port Macquarie.

After the collapse of Boyd's Australian empire, industry continued to spread along the Neutral Bay waterfront - including a gasworks, timberyard and a number of boat builders and repair yards (the first steamship to be built in Australia, the ferry Surprise, had been constructed in the Bay as early as 1831). The wool store was demolished in 1878 and the stone was used in a seawall at the site. Boyd's waterfront site including the pump became a boatyard, which for much of the first half of the twentieth century was that of the Halvorsen Brothers. Founded by Norwegian Lars Halvorsen, this company has been a major boat builder for many decades, has built some significant vessels and is well known in Australia. Halvorsens were operating at the site from the 1920s until 1937 when their works moved to Ryde, but they continued to hold an interest in the Neutral Bay site.

At the beginning of the Second World War, the whole area, including Craignathan, was acquired by the RAAF as a base for its marine wing. Many alterations were made over the next 20 years (Craignathan was demolished in 1968), and in the course of one of these the old pump, still standing but in a sad state of dilapidation, was rediscovered, to some extent restored, and a plaque affixed reading:

'This tablet commemorates the site of the residence, dam, wharf and woolstore once standing in this vicinity which belonged to Benjamin Boyd (1795-1851), merchant, financier, whaler and shipping owner of Sydney Town and Twofold Bay in the 1840's.

This tablet is attached to a wooden pump shaft with iron rod, which were uncovered by Halvorsen Brothers in the 1930's and preserved by the subsequent occupiers, the RAAF. Tablet affixed by No 2 Aircraft Detachment 'B' RAAF, and unveiled by the Minister of State for the Air, the Hon, F M

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Osborne DSC, MP on 10 November 1958.' (Boyd was probably born c.1803.)

Shortly after this unveiling, the site was transferred to the Marine Centre of the Australian Customs Service as a depot for its boarding vessels and impounded craft. The practice of boarding incoming vessels has now ceased. The site has seen more than one and a half centuries of industrial usage.

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Statutory Heritage Values Customs Marine Centre, is a Commonwealth Heritage place and is protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Commonwealth Heritage List Statement of Significance

View looking east along the foreshore, adjacent to the southern facade of the office building showing retaining wall. The seawall in front of the office building is reputedly constructed of former wool store and Craignthan stonework. Source: Godden Mackay Logan 2008.

The Customs Marine Centre, and particularly the 1840s pump, the seawall, the artefacts on the cliff face and the slipway and boatshed remains and other elements are of historical significance for several reasons. The site is associated with Ben Boyd's industrial enterprise on Neutral Bay in the 1840s and in turn is connected with commerce on Sydney Harbour and the wider colony's growing pastoral and commercial development. Also, the site was associated with shipbuilding and ship repair activities, and with wartime and customs maritime duties. The site, particularly significant for its long and continuing association with waterfront commercial and industrial operations, is one of the few remaining maritime industrial sites on the north shore of the harbour.

The pump is of exceptional interest as an example of handmade pumping technology as used in mid-nineteenth century industrial processes connected with the wool industry.

The site has direct associations with 1840s entrepreneur and adventurer Ben Boyd, who made a strong impression in colonial NSW and who not only built the woolstore and woolscour but lived adjacent to the works. The site is also associated with the prominent boat-building firm Halvorsens who are well known in Australia and who traded from the site for a considerable number of years in the twentieth century.

The place has strong potential to yield archaeological evidence of former shipbuilding and other activities over several phases.

Possessing a definite maritime industrial character, and being located right on the Sydney Harbour foreshore at Neutral Bay, the Customs Centre has important aesthetic values.

Criterion A Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage values Process Western bay of the workshop building

showing the remarkably long undressed timber posts, thought to have been retained from a previous boatshed on the site. Source: Godden Mackay Logan 2008

The Customs Marine Centre, and particularly the 1840s pump, the seawall, the artefacts on the cliff face and the slipway and boatshed remains and other elements are of historical significance for several reasons. The site is associated with Ben Boyd's industrial enterprise on Neutral Bay in the 1840s and in turn is connected with commerce on Sydney Harbour and the wider colony's growing pastoral and commercial development. Also, the site was associated with shipbuilding and ship repair activities, and with wartime and customs maritime duties. The site is particularly significant for its long and continuing association with waterfront commercial and industrial operations.

Criterion B Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage valuesRarity The Customs Marine Centre is one of the few remaining

maritime industrial sites on the north shore of the harbour. The pump is of exceptional interest as an example of handmade pumping technology as used in mid-nineteenth century industrial processes connected with the wool industry.

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View looking northeast toward the Neutral Bay Customs Marine DepotGodden Mackay Logan, 2008 Criterion C Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage valuesResearch

The steel boat cradle located in the rear of the western bay of the workshop building, associated with the slipway The boat cradle and spillway are no longer in use.

The place has strong potential to yield archaeological evidence of former shipbuilding and other activities over several phases

Criterion D Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage valuesCharacteristics

Ben Boyd’s water pump, located at the rear (northern) end of the western bay of the workshop building

The pump is of exceptional interest as an example of handmade pumping technology as used in mid-nineteenth century industrial processes connected with the wool industry

Criterion E Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage valuesAesthetic Possessing a definite maritime industrial character, and being

located right on the Sydney Harbour foreshore at Neutral Bay, the Customs Centre has important aesthetic values.

Criterion H Gazetted Commonwealth Heritage valuesSignificant people The site has direct associations with 1840s entrepreneur and

adventurer Ben Boyd, who made a strong impression in colonial NSW and who not only built the woolstore and woolscour but lived adjacent to the works. The site is also associated with the prominent boat-building firm Halvorsens who are well known in Australia and who traded from the site for a considerable number of years in the twentieth century.

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Non-Statutory Heritage Listings North Sydney Draft Local Environment Plan

Customs Marine Centre is identified as a place of heritage significance in the North Sydney Draft Local Environment Plan. As the site is located on Commonwealth land the LEP inclusion does not have legal effect.

Property or Information Access Restrictions or Requirements if Any

Customs Marine Centre is used a training centre and is not open to the public.

Conservation Documents or References

Godden Mackay Logan, 2008. Customs Marine Depot, Draft Heritage Management Plan

Godden Mackay Logan, "Heritage Assessment: Customs Marine Centre, Neutral Bay", for Knight Frank, March 2001.

National Trust of Australia (NSW), information. North Shore Times, 25 October 1978.

Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Novemeber 1931. Pike, Douglas (ed), "Australian Dictionary of Biography", vol 1, Melbourne University Press, 1966.

Record Last Updated 30 October 2013