Ports

The port of Sydney is often described as the finest harbour in the world, but it is perhaps the only harbour on the NSW coast which is workable without great engineering intervention. In the days of coastal shipping being the mainstay of transport, most of the ports situated at the estuaries of rivers required control of sandbars across their mouths by dredging, or the construction of breakwaters and training walls. Artificial basins were built at exposed places such as Port Kembla, Kiama and Coffs Harbour by means of breakwaters.

As the volumes of exports grew and the size of ships increased, the emphasis moved to a few large ports at Newcastle, Botany Bay and Port Kembla. Sydney had been a victim of its own success in that large storage areas adjacent to the dockside were no longer available as they were too valuable as residential sites. At Newcastle extensive re-arrangement of the river and its banks by dredging and reclamation resulted in the creation of the largest port in the world for the export of coal.

A fundamentally unattractive, in its natural state, site for a port at Botany Bay was much modified by engineering using dredging, reclamation and seawalls to create the major port for Sydney, replacing the harbour which had been the initial reason for the colony’s foundation. The harbour at Port Kembla is largely an artificial basin, initially built for and within the steelworks, but now catering for coal, wheat and general cargo.