Stephen has a passion for collecting old photographs of our Lakes area.  He shared some of the photos and their diverse and fascinating backstories with us.
Stephen started collecting pictures of boats around our lakes in 2004.   He has used high quality scanning to print up good, clear reproductions.  He originally collected around 600 photographs, and was then gifted digitised copies of 15,000 photos from Paynesville Maritime Museum.  He has years of happy research ahead!
 
Ours is the second largest lakes system in the southern hemisphere.  It was first settled in 1842 by a Mr Jones, after whom Jones Bay was named.   Gippsland was difficult to access, with its dense timber and swamps.  Initially cattle, sheep etc came over the Monaro.  Goods came by boat to Port Albert, then Sale and then through the bush.
 
Steamers opened up the lakes from Port Albert in 1858, originally through the natural entrance at Lakes Entrance.  In 1860, building of the first local steamer was started near Sale, just upstream of the soon to be built bridge!  They had to wait for a flood to launch the boat around the edge of the bridge!  The Sale wharf moved to 5 km from Sale, which was the closest boats could reach.
 
In Bairnsdale, the wharf was originally below our Post Office, but it was shifted downstream when the bridge was built.
 
Boats were reaching Metung, Paynesville, Raymond Island and Bairnsdale and they supplied the gold fields through Mossiface.  They also functioned like a bus for the locals, and took tourists around the area in the 1880s.  The rivers are less navigable now, as land clearing has caused sand slugs. These actually caused the flooded river to divert away from the port at Mossiface permanently.
 
By the mid 1880s as many as 11 vessels a day brought goods in.  There was a telegraph between Port of Bairnsdale and Porters building to notify the locals when a boat had moored.   Swan Reach originally had an opening bridge – the mechanism was run on demand by local school children.
 
At one stage, two paddle steamers came down from the Murray and tried to undercut the local boats, but they went broke through lack of support.  One was turned into a floating hotel, then became a maize hulk.  Eventually the hull was refitted with a propeller instead of paddles
 
Maintenance of the boats was ongoing.  Teredo worm gets into wood hulls and they all had to be cleaned and coated annually.  Another peril of the old wooden steamers was their vulnerability to fire.  The Tanjil, built 1868, was a very popular way to get from Sale to Bdale and Lakes Entrance (originally Cunninghame).  Stephen had a photo of the Tanjil as it burned to water level at the Bairnsdale wharf.   
 
By October 1885 another Tanjil was built and it worked until the 1920s.  It was built to run in either direction, so it could reach narrow Mossiface. Eventually it was converted into a barge to bring stone to shore up the river banks.
 
Sadly, the steamers assisted in their own demise, as they brought the railway sleepers and lines needed to construct the railway to Bairnsdale.  This was completed in June 1888.  After this, the steamers were no longer needed for transporting goods.  But they remained popular for tourism and picnic trips. 
 
Stephen spoke about the natural entrance at Lakes Entrance, which silted up regularly, making passage in and out of the lakes impossible for 3-6 months of the year.  In 1889, the new entrance was completed using hand labour, a dredge call Wombat and a natural storm.  
 
The Wombat (great name for a dredge!!! Ed.) had an interesting history – built in 1908 in Paynesville, it worked the lakes until 1937, then became a Sydney ferry. After WW2 it went to Papua New Guinea as a salvage vessel, and it eventually sank in PNG with loss of life. 
 
It was a very interesting morning, with huge photos passing around our tables and lots of whispered discussions.  Thanks Stephen.