Decked Out For One Last Trip
Sun Herald
Saturday September 17, 1988
THEY say old ferries never die, but they never say where they go when the Urban Transit Authority has finished with them.
One of the last places you'd expect to find a former UTA workhorse would have to be Hobart.
Not far from the famous marina where the boats gather after the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race, lies a former Manly ferry, the North Head, and it's 75-years-old this month.
The story behind the Sydney to Hobart pilgrimage is as much a part of the ferry's new owner as it is about the ferry itself.
Jim Hickman is a passionate man.
When he heard the North Head was for sale in 1986, he hatched a plan to sail it across Bass Strait, restore it, and perhaps turn it into a floating restaurant.
He convinced two other equally ferry-mad Tasmanians to put up $10,000 each and, under the title of North Head Pty Ltd, they made a bid of $21,500.
But Transport Minister of the day, Ron Mulock, was more taken by the$100,000 offer from Leighton Developments.
The company wanted to take the ferry apart and rebuild it inside a big shopping and hotel complex in Manly.
The Tasmanians bided their time while a vocal community group lobbied against Leighton's plan.
Eventually, the hotel proposal was rejected and Jim Hickman and his fellow shareholders were pondering the prospect of sailing a Manly ferry across Bass Strait.
"Getting her over the Strait required a certain amount of courage and stupidity - sometimes there's not a lot of difference between the two," said the 62-year-old former fire manager for the Forestry Commission and one-time Commodore of Hobart's Royal Yacht Club.
North Head's engineroom had been kept in top working order and despite 14 months of idleness at Cockatoo Island dockyards, it started first go.
On a fog-shrouded March morning in 1987, the oldest and last of the traditional Manly ferries sailed through The Heads.
But one hour out of Sydney, the main bearing in the gearbox driving the rear propellor seized up bringing the expedition to a deafening halt.
Jim Hickman smiled as he recalled the solution.
"We just reversed her all the way to Hobart, using the front propellor," he said.
Three days later, "without even wetting the decks" the grand old Harbour queen sailed up Hobart's Derwent River.
Now, $100,000 later, and in a new livery of dark green, chocolate brown and custard, North Head is being painstakingly transformed into "the ferry she once was".
Once known as "Barrenjoey", the 1913 Sydney-built steam ferry, put in 35 years on the Manly to Circular Quay run until a facelift was needed.
In 1948 it was revamped with a diesel engine and renamed North Head.
These days, Jim Hickman spends every available moment sanding back decks, greasing parts of the elaborate engines and faithfully restoring the finer details.
He has decided North Head should be more than a floating restaurant and is planning to turn it into a luxury cruising hotel.
But his greatest passion is to sail the restored piece of history back to Sydney for a nostalgic trip around the Harbour.
"That's my ultimate dream," he said.
© 1988 Sun Herald