Wreck of the Lady Kendall

(Click photos for big versions)

Pop along and have a look at her. She's at the boat ramps on Brisbane Water Drive between Koolewong and Tascott stations.

She's currently sitting on a barge, having been raised recently. She sunk in January 2006. She's owned by Alan Draper, the guy who runs the Starship Cruises (lunch cruises) out of Gosford. She was once the ketch Lenna of Taswegian (Tasmanian).

There's another boat of the same name, the Lady Kendall II. She's a modern ferry currently doing lunch cruises on Brisbane Water. See her here.



The prow (front AKA pointy end) with anchor chain hole.

The article on her in today's hard copy of the Express Advocate has a picture of her as a ferry. Very smart she looks, all white with red trim.



She's crusty with barnacles and full of seaweed but you can still see her red paint shining through.



Amidships. That's the middle bit of the boat. I know that from a misspent youth spent watching old war movies.

She was built in Tasmania and launched there in 1903. She was a ketch called Lenna. 21 metres long and twin-masted. She carried logs to Hobart and later worked as a fishing boat in Bass Strait (between Tassie and the mainland).

She won in her class in the Hobart Regatta in 1940, '47, '50 and '54. In 1966 she was converted to a ferry in Melbourne, re-named the Lenna Bird and worked as a tourist ferry on the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria. In 1985 she came up here.



Looking towards the stern (back end) from amidships.

Before the railway came trading ketches took farm produce from Brisbane Water to Sydney. It's 18.2 nautical miles from Barrenjoey Lighthouse to the Sydney Heads. Dunno what that is in kilometres but it can't be more than a morning's sail.



The stern view. You can see the propeller there on the left.

She's off back to Tassie soon. The Tasmanian Wooden Boat Museum is going to restore her to her former glory.

January article
May article, drawing & podcast on her history


Fake doctor

Some guy wearing a stethescope tried to drag a woman out of Wyong Hospital on Sunday night. He got sprung but ran off. He's 40-45, got "dark hair and a bald spot", orders the nurses around and flashed an army badge as ID. Express Advocate article.