Ports
In the early 1850s, when the General Steam Navigation Company, Kiama Steam Navigation Company and the Shoalhaven Steam Navigation Company were independent operations, the major ports of call along the south coast of New South Wales included Sydney, Wollongong, Shoalhaven, Merimbula, Kiama and Twofold Bay. After the amalgamation of the three companies, this list included stops at Gerringong, Batemans Bay, and Nelligen. Later, minor gold rushes at both Moruya and the Wagonga district resulted in their inclusion, and other ports were to include Bermagui, Eden, Narooma and Tathra.
The extent of the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company's operations along the coast can be seen by their 1870 schedule, in which they were making the journey to Kiama, Shoalhaven and Gerringong every three days, and to Ulladulla, Clyde, Shoalhaven and Wollongong at about the same rate. Mourya was visited every two weeks, while an additional journey was made to Merimbula and Ulladulla once a week. 1873 saw a simplification of these services, and a weekly run to Merimbula, Eden and Tathra was amongst the changes.
Maintaining the services of the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company did, at times, take some effort on the part of the residents. For example, in Ulladulla a wooden jetty was built in 1859 in order to retain the services of the company; they had informed the farmers that their ships would not call again at Ulladulla unless better mooring facilities were provided. (After seven years the jetty was replaced by a stone pier built by the government on the natural reef). Similarly the town of Tathra was created through the erection of a small jetty, built so that the local farmers could gain access to coastal shipping which previously had stopped 25 km away at Merimbula.
Read more about this topic: Illawarra Steam Navigation Company
Famous quotes containing the word ports:
“When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)