Photo: CSL Group
Whyalla is South Australia's second largest city and once a major industrial force with an iron ore smelter, steel rolling mill and shipyard. It is a large, sad sort of place that has spent many years struggling for survival, reddened, like a bruised eye, by the iron ore which is blown over the city from the steelworks. Driven by the local steel and petroleum industries, it is the largest provincial city in South Australia.
The first European to visit the site of modern day Whyalla was Matthew Flinders. On 9 March 1802 Flinders sailed along the coast and named Hummock Hill, which now is the site of the city's lookout - a marvellous location which affords 360° views across the city and steelworks as well as across Spencer Gulf and down the coast. Thirty eight years later Edward John Eyre, on one of his many expeditions to the peninsula which now bears his name, passed near the present site of Whyalla. However it wasn't until 1862 that the first pastoral lease - appropriately called Mount Hummock - was taken up in the area.
In 1880 iron ore leases were taken out at Iron Knob and by 1886 BHP had control of the leases with the plan to transport the ore across the Spencer Gulf to be used as a flux at Port Pirie where the silver, lead and zinc from Broken Hill was being smelted. In 1901 a privately owned railway was built between Iron Knob and Hummock Hill. It replaced the bullock drays which had been used to bring the iron ore to the coast.
Whyyalla was founded as Hummock's Hill in 1901 by the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) as the end of a tramway bringing iron ore from the Middleback Ranges to be used in the lead smelters at Port Pirie as flux. A jetty was built to transfer the ore. The settlement, consisting of small cottages and tents clustered around the base of the hill, developed into South Australia's third most populous city after Adelaide and Mt Gambier, and became Australia's biggest company town.
On 16 April 1920 the town was proclaimed as Whyalla. The ore conveyor on the jetty was improved and ore began to be shipped to the newly built Newcastle, New South Wales steelworks. The town grew slowly until 1938.
A blast furnace and harbour were built, and then in 1939 a shipyard to provide ships for the Royal Australian Navy. The population began rising dramatically and many new facilities, including a hospital and abbatoirs, were built.
By 1943 the population was more than 5,000. After the war, the shipyard began producing commercial ships. In 1958 the Company decided to build an integrated steelworks at Whyalla. They were completed in 1965. In the following year salt began to be harvested and coke ovens were built. The population grew extremely rapidly.
In 1970 the city adopted full local government status. Fierce competition from Japanese ship builders resulted in the closing of the shipyards in 1978, which were at the time the largest in Australia. From a peak population of 33,000 in 1976 the population dropped rapidly. A decline in the BHP iron and steel industry since 1981 also impacted employment.
From 2004 northern South Australia enjoyed a mining boom and Whyalla found itself well placed to benefit from new ventures, being situated on the edge of the Gawler Craton. The city experienced an economic upturn with the population slowly increasing and the unemployment rate falling to a more typical level.
Photo: State Library of South Australia
With its five slipways enabling the simultaneous construction of five ships, Whyalla became the largest merchant shipbuilding centre in Australia. The new shipyard incorporated many of the best features of modern British and American shipbuilding practice. All these facilities were built up in a town remote from other industrial centres, where housing for the large influx of workers for this and many other projects had to be provided.
In two years the harbour had been dredged, a blast furnace built and the shipyard's five slipways capable of handling ships of up to 15,000 DWT were nearly ready. The new yard’s maiden launching was the fittingly named HMAS Whyalla, first of four BHP built Bathurst class minesweepers, which was delivered to the Royal Australian Navy on 12th May 1941.
From its inception in 1940, the yard kept a high degree of self sufficiency and always kept abreast of latest developments in shipbuilding techniques. The first ships built at Whyalla in 1940 were four corvettes for the Royal Australian Navy - the first one being appropriately named HMAS Whyalla. These were each of 682 gross tonnage, a far cry from the 83,000 tonne bulk carrier Clutha Capricorn, the largest ship built at Whyalla.
Photo: State Library of South Australia
On the completion of its navy contract, BHP began to build ships for its own needs and other commercial vessels. The keels of its "Chieftain" class ore carriers were next to be laid. Up until that time, most Australian-built ships were occasionally carrying iron ore to the Newcastle Steelworks, but now that it had its own yard, BHP could now build its own purpose-designed ships, that became known as bulk carriers. Iron Monarch (2) and Iron Duke (2) were launched on 8th October 1942, and 3th May 1943 respectively. In March 1942 work began on the first of five 10,000 tons "River" class freighters to the order of the Australian Shipbuilding Board.
The Whyalla shipyard began producing Australian tonnage in increasing numbers. The Australian Shipping Board operated the fleet of Government owned ships. Included among these were thirteen Australian built "A" class or "River" class ships (five of which had been built at Whyalla), several of these, along with the Tyalla, were chartered to carry iron ore and coal for BHP.
In 1957 a plan of development was adopted which resulted in the yard becoming completely equipped for all-welded construction, and brought increased crane capacity on the building births and adjoining areas and the provision for specialised outdoor assembly areas. A production planning department was introduced, which helped the yard not only gain a reputation for building ships but designing them also.
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Whyalla shipyards in 1945. Photo: BHP
The Whyalla Shipyard had been originally designed as a five birth yard, but by the 1960s construction was almost completely confined to two of the larger slipways, Nos. 3 and 4. A notable exception was the semi-submersible offshore oil drilling barge, Ocean Digger, which was too wide for any one birth and was built in Nos. 2 and 3 slipways, straddling the intervening crane wall.
In 1958, BHP announced the decision to build an integrated steelworks at their site in Whyalla alongside the shipyard. This decision was influenced by the State Government of Thomas Playford, which was keen to see ore mined in South Australia and processed in the State as well. New workers flooded into town, and Whyalla continued to expand to the west to accommodate the rising population.
In 1961, when Whyalla had a population of nearly 14,000, it was proclaimed a City. With the completion of forty-five ships, the opening of a steel plant and a population of 22,000 by 1965, which included 8,500 migrants, the future of Whyalla seemed assured. By 1962, BHP was employing 2,301 staff at the steelworks and 1,407 at the shipyards. The town's population boom peaked in 1976 at just over 33,000.
By the 1970s shipbuilding in Australia was no longer profitable, with increasing competition from Asian shipbuilders. A shipbuilding slump led to the Whyalla shipyards being closed in 1978. The Evans Deakin shipyard in Brisbane, which opened at the same time as Whyalla, had closed two years earlier for the same reason after it had become unviable. These two shipyards had constructed 74 merchant vessels over 300 tons gross in the peak period 1942-1972. In 1987 the NSW State Government announced the closure of the State Dockyard at Newcastle, In the same year, the Commonwealth Government concluded the lease of the last of Australia's big shipbuilding yards at Cockatoo Island in Sydney, which was closed in 1992.
In all the Whyalla shipyards built one oil drilling platform and 63 ships of varying size between 1941 and 1978, with the last being the Iron Curtis, launched in 1978. At its peak Whyalla was the biggest shipbuilding port in Australia with a capacity to build ships up to 83,000 tonnes. The largest ship ever built in Australia, the bulk carrier Clutha Capricorn, was launched at the Whyalla shipyards in 1972.
The corvette HMAS Whyalla, the first ship completed at the shipyard, now stands high and dry beside the Lincoln Highway at the northern entrance to the city, not far from the remnants of the shipyard at which it was built, as the premier attraction at the Whyalla Maritime Museum.
Another ship built at Whyalla, the bulk ore carrier SS Lake Illawarra, gained notoriety on the evening of Sunday, 5th January 1975 when the vessel, bound for the Electrolytic Zinc Company in Hobart with a cargo of 10,000 tons of zinc concentrate, drifted out of the main navigation lane of the Derwent River and collided with the Tasman Bridge at 9.27 pm. Two piers of the bridge collapsed along with 127 metres of decking. Four cars ran over the gap into the Derwent, five occupants died, while several others managed to escape from their vehicles that were left hanging on the edge of the gap. Seven crewmen from the Lake Illawarra also lost their lives. The depth of the river at this point (35 metres) is such that the wreck of Lake Illawarra still lies on the bottom with concrete slabs on top of it, the debis pile having been deemed unsafe to move. The ship's oil was pumped out, and the bow was removed at a later date.
HMAS Whyalla, the first ship built at Whyalla being launched in 1941.
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