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Until
it broke down irreparably in 1920, Archer dredged almost 20 million tons of sand,
silt and clay from the riverbed and pumped most of the spoil behind various walls.8
In 1926, a replacement dredge, Fitzroy, commenced dredging; however it worked
at only half the annual rate of its predecessor due to Depression funding cuts
in the 1930s and wartime work elsewhere in the 1940s. Between 1901 and 1920, RHB
raised existing walls, some of which had collapsed because shipworm (teredo) had
eaten out the timber components. In the long run, the experimental and cost-saving
designs on the Fitzroy proved a failure. The RBH also extended No. 2 Wall (5,600ft)
and Elbow Wall (11,290ft); it also erected Tannery Wall and North Wall (800ft)
along the north bank of the flats, and Winding Reach (4,860ft), Humbug and Satellite
Walls (16,000ft), lower in the river. During the 1930s Depression, government
funding for unemployment relief allowed RHB to carry out stone-paving to protect
exposed banks and to face old sections of the walls in need of repair. The board
also erected Shoal Island Wall (15,000ft) although the latter was left uncompleted.
[More on Bates' plans]
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Decades
of 'improvement' on the Fitzroy River through wall construction and dredging considerably
altered the natural lines of the river. Some islands and sandbanks were removed
by dredging while many others disappeared amid the spoil dumped behind the walls.
The artificially created land today appears as natural, having been rapidly colonised
by mangroves, vines and eucalypts. Many of the changes were already observable
by 1915, as former Harbour Master, Albert Sykes recorded in one of his popular
columns in The Morning Bulletin. [Sykes'
Observations]
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