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LET THE BULKER BE
It’s from Queensland, and it’s here to help:
The area surrounding the carrier Pasha Bulker stranded off a Newcastle beach is going into lockdown today as salvage experts working with special tugs seek to free it.
The [Cairns-based] 64m Pacific Responder steamed into port yesterday to help in the monumental task of getting the stranded carrier back out to sea.
But locals have fallen in love with the massive freighter and now don’t want it to leave:
Hunter Business Chamber CEO Doug Parrish has told NEWS.com.au that local businesses have been given a shot in the arm by the spectacle of the grounded ship and would be happy for it to stay …
He said that since the 225m ship washed onto the popular beach, tourists have been “clogging the arterial” roads hoping to catch a glimpse of the giant hunk of steel.
“It’s been a short-term shot in the arm (for the local economy),” Mr Parrish said.
“I suspect most businesses would be worried about the impact if it’s removed.”
If salvaging goes according to plan, the Pasha will be gone by the end of the month.
If they want it to stay, all they have to do is scrape together quite a lot of cash and buy the Pasha Bulker from the insurers.
Simple.
Posted by Steve at the pub on 2007 06 22 at 02:20 AM • permalinkAs part of my tourism initiative, I will be installing these beauties up and down the eastern seaboard. I expect masssive loss of life, but that is a small price to pay for what will undoubtedly be a boost to local economies.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 06 22 at 02:20 AM • permalinkRe#1 This was the follow up song - more colourful language.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 06 22 at 02:24 AM • permalink#5 - My apologies if their irresistible song almost lured you to your death.
A belated possibly NSFW re:#3 although personally I consider it art. Still gives me partial wood though.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 06 22 at 02:38 AM • permalinkPAY-sha. A California family of shipowners.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2007 06 22 at 02:57 AM • permalink#1, Bob Hudson and the Electric Jug Band first performed that song in the back bar of the Star Hotel on a famous Saturday arvo in 1974. Fire regulations would forbid so many people congregating in such a tiny area nowadays, but it was vintage Newie pub music.
Re the Pasha Bulker, that’s also vintage Newie. It’s the 237th ship to be wrecked off our coast in 200 years. We can keep it or get rid of it, whatever. If it stays it will end up beneath the sand like all the others. The last one, the Sygna, has created a beaut surfing and fishing reef.
#10 - I’ll say. Just saw 3 brass monkeys headed to the welders and am currently warming my hands by the heat of a witch’s tit.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 06 22 at 03:22 AM • permalinkThe tug salvage crews have some slack time before they begin (ahem) tugging. Tomorrow some of the boys are off to the Hunter vineyards to sample the fruits of the vine, others are off to Sydney to sample the fruits of…well…Sydney. How do I know this? I’ve just shared a brew with the boys at the Albion Hotel, Wickham, home to any honest seafarer.
The Pasha Bulker is on the docket to be hauled off in two weeks.
“I suspect most businesses would be worried about the impact if it’s removed.”
If they’re worried about tourism, perhaps they should follow the example of other regional cities and towns.
However, judging from the length of this list, they’ve got their work cut out if they’re looking for something original.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 06 22 at 03:48 AM • permalink#3 IT. I would suggest that the wrong half of those sirens is piscine.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 06 22 at 04:56 AM • permalinkO/T but if I was in Chavez land Id be looking at a little bit of strategic food hoarding about now.
He has the answer to low food production its socialist farming cooperatives.Anyone want to guess how this might work out using say China and USSR as examples?
And this from the gruinaid revealing the real reason HamASS attacked Fatah.
It was a plot by America and Israel of course.
They only did it because they were forced to. Brings a tear to your eye to find out the had to take control by a bloody coup.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 06 22 at 04:56 AM • permalinkThe area surrounding the carrier Pasha Bulker stranded off a Newcastle beach is going into lockdown today as the proprietors of the hamburger and ice-cream shops on Nobby’s Beach fight any attempt to refloat the ship.
Reuters reported that the store owners have never had it so good as floods of tourists (to equal the floods of water in the area), descend on the beach to rubber neck the ship while stuffing their faces with burgers, chips and ice creams.
One shop owner commented “If that ship ever floats again, we’re sunk”. However, whilever the boat remains stuck fast on the beach, business remains buoyant for the local take-away trade.
Salvage operations never go to plan (but you have to have a plan, you just keep changing it). If they get her off, it will be a quiet epic of salvage and a most remarkable feat. I hope they do get her off, poor bitch is only a year old.
Knowing people in the trade, and knowing that she went ashore on a high water after having deballasted allegedly due to being placed on Port Waratah’s ‘black list’ of slow deballasters, I can confidently predict:
1. The court cases will go into 2010
2. It will be very, very difficult to get her off. If only because Ben Buckler reef is astern of her and she is so light.
MarkL
Canberra#27, MarkL,
It’s even money about getting her off. She’s on sand, not on Big Ben, though that’s where she scraped her bum just before she went aground. I was having a drink with blokes from one of the salvage tugs this evening, and they think they’ll get her off the beach in one piece.
Maybe.
I was around also when the Sygna went aground at Stockton Bight. She was on sand as well. But the bastard boys of the Maritime Union and Varleys Engineering (people now covered by the CFMEU) sabotaged the salvage operation in pursuit of quadruple time rates. The stern is still high and dry on Stockton beach.
AWAs might prevent a repeat of that union disgrace. Whatever, we in Newcastle don’t want that boat as a permanent fixture.
#16 - I have no truck with big bananas - I want pineapples - look at the photo on the right top.
Now that’s a tourist attraction (says I, tongue firmly in cheek).#29, you’ll be very pleased to hear that we have one of them here too:
Visiting it was one of the highlights of my younger years (I was a terribly deprived child).
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 06 22 at 08:02 AM • permalinkWe take our big pineapples serious in Hawaii:
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE
H.C.R. NO. 212
TWENTY-THIRD LEGISLATURE, 2006
H.D. 1
STATE OF HAWAII
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONREQUESTING the Chair of the House Committee on Tourism and Culture and the Chair of the Senate Committee on Tourism to each designate a member of their respective committees to conduct informal discussions on ways to replicate the historic Iwilei pineapple-shaped water tank.
WHEREAS, there are but a handful of historic water tanks in the United States that were constructed to represent a certain industry, and the Dole pineapple-shaped water tank located in the district of Iwilei, erected in 1927, was regarded as a particularly significant and symbolic architectural structure; and
WHEREAS, the Dole water tank was more famous than the peach water tower in Clanton, Alabama, and the Brooks Foods ketchup bottle water tower in Cillinsville, Illinois; and
WHEREAS, the original pineapple water tank was an attractively painted work of art, weighed 30 tons and held 100,000 gallons of water that was used to drive the cannery’s sprinkler system, and stood as a prominent Honolulu landmark next to the now-defunct cannery in Iwilei; and
WHEREAS, the famous and beloved old water tank was finally taken down in 1993 and placed in storage because it had become frail, badly corroded, and apt to topple in a strong wind; and
WHEREAS, pineapple and sugar were the two major agricultural crops upon which the economy of Hawaii rested before the onset of tourism; and
WHEREAS, the thousands of Hawaii residents who worked in the pineapple industry, their lives intertwined and affected by this mainstay of Hawaiian agriculture, include:
(1) Agricultural workers, many whom immigrated to Hawaii in search of employment and a better life;
(2) Managerial, financial, transportation, and distribution personnel; and
(3) Cannery workers, including many students who worked during summer vacation to pay their way through school and many others;
and
WHEREAS, numerous Nimitz Highway motorists can recall the aromatic emanations from the cannery at the height of the pineapple canning season until its closure in 1991; and
WHEREAS, the replacement of the pineapple water tank would serve as an attraction for today’s tourists and educate people about the importance of pineapple in Hawaii’s history; and
WHEREAS, most importantly, the water tank would stand as a memorial to the thousands of residents who earned a living through “pine” and were part of a great industry that represented a long-gone era; now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, the Senate concurring, that the Chair of the House Committee on Tourism and Culture and the Chair of the Senate Committee on Tourism are each requested to designate a member of their respective committees to conduct informal discussions on ways to replicate the historic Iwilei pineapple-shaped water tank; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Administrator of the State Historic Preservation Division within the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Chair of the American Studies Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, ILWU, Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Chairperson of the state Department of Agriculture, Historic Hawaii Foundation, Hawaii Farm Bureau, Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, Pineapple Growers of Hawaii, Castle & Cooke Hawaii, Chair of the Senate Committee on Tourism, and the Chair of the House Committee on Tourism and Culture.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2007 06 22 at 03:17 PM • permalink#13 Take it from me, it’s never that cold.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 22 at 07:16 PM • permalink#24
As each thuggish, clumsy, stupid
economic grabtheft fails and has unintended consequences, the response is more grab, more consequences in a downward spiral. Very Shakespearian, Aeschalean, Wagnerian. No, not Wagnerian, there’s nothing grand aboput this.Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 22 at 07:21 PM • permalinkI see my post #36 could just as easily apply to #35 as to the stranded collier off Newcastle
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 22 at 07:24 PM • permalinkBrings a tear to your eye to find out the had to take control by a bloody coup.
They wept as they gunned down their comrades. “America is making us do it,” they wailed.
Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 22 at 08:12 PM • permalink#36 actually we have plenty of dive sites already… there’s this thing called the great barrier reef that’s supposed to be not too terrible as dives go.
Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 22 at 08:19 PM • permalinkThere is some consideration that she has been distorted by the grounding and pounding, and thus it may well be uneconomic to salvage and repair her.
Feasible, given that Korea and China build these things by the mile, cut em off every 700 feet or so, whack on a pointy end and a blunt end with a big deisel and screw, give it a funny name and a Greek/Philipino crew and off you go.
Could be that she will be broken up where she lies, thus providing entertainment for a while yetCheers
RodC#36 Dave, maaate!!.... where ya been, sport, some Tibetan monastery for the last 10 years???
Doncha know the reef’s f*~#@d… been killed by gorebal wormenising. But I guess you wouldn’t have heard about it. Where do I start???
Once upon a time there was this unemployed fat man who had the neatest idea of how to raise a very big lot of money very quickly. So he invented the internet, but that didn’t bring in enough even to pay the electricity bill. So he enlisted the aid of a group of nice people calling themselves People Against Climate Olteration (P.A.C.O.).....Need I go on ?
Cheers
RodCWell it looks Newcastle might get its wish… it looks like the salvage efforts might cost more than the ship’s worth meaning it will be cheaper to build a pier out and dismantle the ship, due in part to the amount of money the steel can be sold for. This scenario could take up to a year to complete. There’s more of this story on gCaptain’s Maritime Expert’s Blog
It’s starting to look like it, Ash. The salvage boys are still preparing for a tow next week to refloat it, but we understand there are plans also to cut it up into sections if the tow fails. That’s what eventually happened with the Sygna. We were at a show tonight with some of the engineers, and the chop job is apparently the most likely scenario.
My daughter wants Pasha Bulker to stay there at least until next weekend by which time she will have finished her uni exams and will have free time to go up there and have a look at it.
Yes, I know, very selfish. But that’s generation Y for you. Are we up to generation Z yet? What age groups are X and Y?
#51, Ash, We were over at the Western Basin site today where the salvage crews are laying out the haulage chains. They’re serious pieces of work, 6-inch-thick links, 500m lengths, huge anchors being dropped tonight and tomorrow. We believe Monday is going to be the first attempt if sea conditions allow. The salvage tugs are quite wonderful boats.
gcaptain—Oh, boy! OIL SPILL! OIL SPILL!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 06 23 at 02:34 PM • permalink
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Maybe they should use some colourful language.