Pappinbarra wreck made local legend

The small house sign is gone now. Vandals badly damaged it and its owner, Eric, removed it into his garage for safe keeping.

The name Pappinbarra, possibly of Aboriginal origin, was and is the rural place name of a remote village about 20 kilometres north-west of Wauchope, on the mid north coast.

It was once dairy farming country and the Pappinbarra River is a tributary of the Hastings River flowing out into Port Macquarie, far to the east.

The Shortland house sign was a reminder of the owner's rural origins far inland on the upper reaches of a river.

But mention Pappinbarra to local history buffs or maritime historians up at Port Stephens and the name has another special significance.

For at Fingal Bay, the name is a reminder of a now almost forgotten NSW shipwreck, the memory of which lives on locally. That's largely because of a drama generated more than 84 years ago and for some rare photographs of its untimely end.

The once well-known S.S. Pappinbarra was a small, steel-hulled coastal trader of 518 tons built in 1925. Owned by Nicholas Cain Co of Port Macquarie, she sailed between Sydney and Port Macquarie before meeting her end virtually ashore in a violent gale on September 11, 1929.

Making her way down the coast overnight, the Pappinbarra was caught in what was later described as a cyclone. While seeking shelter inside Shoal Bay, the steamer ran aground instead on rocks off Point Stephens, on the northern side of Fingal Island, behind the port's outer light.

Caught amid mountainous seas, shrieking winds and driving rain squalls, there was no escape. A later marine court blamed the vessel's master but also declared the loss was inevitable.

There were 16 crew aboard the 46.6-metre coaster but no lives were lost. On the night of the ship's grounding, the lighthouse staff lost sight of the stricken vessel in the dark and didn't realise anything was amiss until several hours later when the steamer crew knocked at the lighthouse keeper's residence, seeking food and shelter.

Luckily the crew members didn't have to swim to safety as the wreck was sandwiched between the grimly named Shark Hole and Shark Island.

In daylight when high seas had abated, the Pappinbarra was found wedged tightly in the rocks with the seas breaking over her. She'd been holed in several places, but there were initial high hopes to refloat the stranded vessel.

A big crew of salvage men then camped on this "lighthouse island" to patch and pump out the twin-screw steel steamer stuck fast on rocks, listing at a 45 degree angle.

The grounded vessel's sister ship, the Uralla, had become a total wreck on Stockton Bight in similar foul weather only the June before.

Another sister ship, the Urana, then continued the coastal trade of the ill-fated vessel.

An experienced hard hat diver, with a big brass helmet and weighted boots, was even engaged to try and salvage the Pappinbarra. One book lists his name as Bill Luxton, but could this be a mistake?

After all, Newcastle harbour's famous salvage diver was around. His name was Edward, or Ted, Luxton, of Carrington, and he took part in numerous rescues and salvage bids in both Newcastle and Sydney.

No stranger to danger, he'd been a member of Britain's famous Dover Patrol in World War I and said he preferred salvage work to minesweeping (when many trawlers struck floating mines and vanished) as "it was much safer".

Despite weeks of effort, salvage work was abandoned on October 16, 1929, after more gales buffeted the damaged ship.

The wreck was sold at auction in Sydney in late October 1929 for £145 (possibly $7250 today) and its timber cargo for £10 (about $500). The new owner was hopeful of raising the wreck.

Today little remains of the coastal steamer except for some historic photographs. The wreck is broken up and widely spread in water up to six metres deep. Divers say the main feature is the ship's large boiler, some deck beams and other artefacts scattered among the kelp.

But some ship items survived to be recycled. Port Stephens historian and author John Clarke believes a ship's derrick and an old mast both washed ashore and later used on the port trawler Eileen Sylvia may well have come off the Pappinbarra.

The final word on the sunken ship saga, however, should go to the 1930s Fingal Island shell grit miner, the late Arthur Murdoch, who once spent 11 years on the island.

In his 1984 memoir, Sheer Grit, Murdoch wrote of never ceasing to wonder how the practically new steel cargo boat "had missed all the outlying reefs and driven stern first into a cleft in the rocks not much wider than the 35 ft (10.6m) beam of the ship."

Murdoch said the ship "practically filled the rock cleft so when a lifeboat broke loose and floated over the stern, it floated in reasonably calm water".

The former shell grit miner watched the big, expensive salvage operation continue for two months, involving divers, pumps, a chartered tug and about 10 Nelson Bay fishermen, who were housed on the island's Shelley Beach in tents.

"It was a failure, the bottom had been too badly holed. It finally broke up in 1934; I used the heavy deck timbers and hatch covers which washed ashore at Shelley as part of my new hut when I built it in 1935," Murdoch wrote.