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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-13 Daily Xml
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City of Adelaide Clipper

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (15:41): I rise today to speak about the City of Adelaide clipper. On 14 April, I was invited to board the City of Adelaide clipper to help splice the mainbrace. This was a significant event which marked and paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of the small team which had worked tirelessly for over three years to see the City of Adelaide clipper returned to its home in South Australia.

In 1864, the City of Adelaide was built to transport cargo and passengers between Sunderland in the United Kingdom to Adelaide, South Australia. The ship was innovative at the time as it comprised a wooden hull over an iron frame, rather than the more common wooden frames traditional at the time. Over the next 23 years, the ship completed 23 return journeys between the United Kingdom and Australia, carrying passengers including Frances Goyder, the wife of George Goyder who established the Goyder line of rainfall in South Australia, and Frederick Bullock, who would later become Mayor of Adelaide.

From 1888, the clipper undertook a number of journeys to North America for the timber trade before being used as an isolation hospital in the early 20th century and as a naval drill ship from 1923. After World War II, the ship was decommissioned and donated to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve club, which used it as their clubrooms and headquarters in Glasgow until 1989. In 1991, the ship mysteriously sank at its moorings, where it stayed underwater for about a year before it was raised in 1992 and slipped near the Scottish Maritime Museum.

The future of the City of Adelaide was in jeopardy from 2000 until 2009, with the Scottish parliament even considering a proposal to deconstruct the ship. In 2010, after considering a number of options with regard to the City of Adelaide's future, it was announced that the Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Limited, a group comprised predominantly of South Australians, was the successful and preferred bidder for the ship and the project to relocate the ship to Adelaide began.

The task of transporting the City of Adelaide from Scotland to Adelaide was no mean feat. The engineering complexities surrounding the move were enormous, as were the financial demands. However, 149 years after her first journey to Adelaide, the City of Adelaide arrived back in South Australia and is currently berthed at Dock One at Port Adelaide. I understand the intention of the Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Limited is to restore the ship to its former glory and have it exhibited as a tourist attraction, much like the Cutty Sark at Greenwich in London.

An enormous amount of work has already been undertaken to bring the City of Adelaide back to South Australia, and the volunteers involved should be highly commended for the work they have already done. I do not think that anybody is under the impression that restoration of this magnitude will be easy; however, the Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide' Limited has already achieved what many have thought was impossible. I hope that a permanent home for the City of Adelaide will be found soon by the government, and look forward to visiting again. There is no doubt in my mind that a restored City of Adelaide clipper ship will be a similarly attractive tourist attraction in South Australia as the Cutty Sark is in the UK.

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