York Brothers boat builders
Figure 1501. York Brothers Swan Bay Shipyard 1968
Bill and Bob were both mechanical minded and practical thinkers. If they are going to build boats, they need to get them in the water. Their first challenge was to build the slipway. An application for approval was submitted to council. The main concern was breaching the natural levy bank that protected the immediate surrounding farmland from flooding during any major rain event. There was also the problem of the council managed road running right through the centre of the two workshops. Negotiations with local council resolved that application to vary the property title had to be lodged and approved with the Lands department to effectively move the Swan Bay Road east toward Woodburn on the other side to the second fabrication shed. The levy bank had to be maintained at road level however was effectively swapped like for like re defining the property title boundary and the council then were to manage the portion of the original farm property now being the public road. The original levy bank then became part of the shipyard property running north until the road rejoined the levy bank some three or four hundred meters down river. This cleared the way for the slipway to be excavated and marks the beginning of a new era of boat building on the Richmond River.
The next step was to introduced electric welding and oxy acetylene cutting. By using the lathe and other fitting and machining equipment in the workshop, my father and uncle went on to design and build their own shipbuilding machinery and equipment including a plate roller, pipe bender, hydraulic press and various additions to the yard including the slipway rails for launching vessels and various mobile cranes.
The first steel vessel to be built at the yard was the 84 feet long cargo vessel CV “Malooka” in 1959.
Jack Crisp from Evans Head then had York Brothers build the “Rose of Summer”. A 45 feet long trawler and operated his boat out of Evans Head for many years.
The next vessel was the 56 feet long tug “Moree”.
Figure 1520. Tugboat “Moree”
My father then negotiated with Evans Paddon from Evans Head to build a 60 feet long fishing vessel “Carolyn R”. It was all so novel as a steel trawler as most trawlers out of the Eastern Seaboard at that time were built from timber.
Notably the name ‘Evans’ has true meaning, as it was his grandfather Captain Thomas Paddon who founded Evans Head way back in 1877. It was purely by chance, but I happen to stumble onto Captain Thomas Paddon’s grave myself back in 1995 when I was exploring through the bush area behind a new housing estate being built at Evans Head. His grave sits high on a quiet, isolated hill east of the blue pools on the road to the Iron Gates. It had obviously not been visited for some time as the iron fence around the grave was overgrown to hardly notice it. It was just by chance I wandered that way knowing the blue pool was there somewhere.
The next vessel to be built at the yard were a 40 feet long Tug boat “Harwood”; 42 feet long Tug boat “Pebbles”.
Figure 1525. Tugboat “Pebbles”
Figure 1524. Tugboat “Harwood”
With the business of fabricating ships from steel, came the added responsibility of assuring quality and best business practice. My father saw the merit of becoming a member of the Metal Trades Employers Association. This is an employer affiliated association where information on legal responsibilities and obligation under the legislation passed by government in the metal trades was a must for any successful business in this industry. My father knew this and joined in 1960.
Figure 1526. Membership of the Metal Trades Employers Association
With this membership, came the advantage of regular updates on where the industry was headed with legal requirements and provided the necessary reliable information to be paying the correct salaries wages to workers under the various applicable awards.
With that my father applied for and successfully completed various industry certificates including his crane drivers’ certificate of competency and his Riggers and Crane Chasing certificates. Occupational Health and Safety was also at the infancy stages of development at this time, and my mother attended courses of instruction in first aid and home nursing.
York Bros grew from strength to strength as a shipbuilding company and went on to launch vessel after vessel including a 46 feet long Tug boat “Harwood”; a 51 feet long trawler, “Toni Cristine”; a 42 feet long Tug boat “Pebbles”; a 37 feet long fishing vessel, “Tom Thumb; a 56 feet long Cargo vessel Frank Rei, which was subsequently exported to New Guinea; a 140 feet long crane Barge, “Geelong”, and three 60 feet long Dump Barges for Queensland Harbours and Marine.
My father, Bill York took up a genuine interest as the business entrepreneur, and Bob York was always alongside with him to get the job done. Whatever it was, they did it together and so were set to risk everything on making it big. They started by building boats together but both brothers had a keen interest in finding a way to crack the mining game and put their heads to together to come up with a unique invention in 1958. The York Mineral Concentrator.
Figure 1547. Bill York
How this came to be is a particular favorite story of my uncles. He told me how just by chance, they stumbled on to a unique natural phenomenon. Knowing that panning for gold was to wash concentrated material with water until you discard all the light material and are left with the heavy material, usually gold, they set up a timber tray at an angle and started to experiment.
Figure 1548. Set up the wash process
Figure 1549. Set up the wash process
They then developed a molded tray with the wide end or mouth at the top and the smaller closed throat end at the bottom.
Figure 1550. Moulded tray development
They then ran water down the incline and introduced a mixture of light and heavy sand materials to see how it flowed. Lifting the angle, lowing the angle, adding paddles at the throat of the tray, they tried everything to separate the material. Without success. After several days and many attempts, they had no luck until Bob just happened to reach into his pocket to pull out and light up a smoke, he accidently pulled out a two-bob coin. That twenty pence in the old money or twenty cents today. The coin fell into the tray and rolled down to lodge in the throat. It was there that suddenly, the heavy rutile and zircon minerals in the concentrate started to build up under the coin. A light bulb moment shared between the two brothers, and it wasn’t long before they tested various wedges sliding in through the side at the throat and with a slot cut into the bottom of the tray had the concentrated material dropping down with the light material running over the top. This changed the lives for the two York families, and it wasn’t long before patent AU1958039750 was granted, brochures were produced and advertising throughout the world commenced with affiliated representatives holding offices in Sydney, New York, and Tokyo.
Figure 1551. Patent Registration
Figure 1558. Design developed fibreglass tray
Figure 1559. Design developed fibreglass tray
Figure 1559. Design developed fibreglass tray
From this my father won several floating dredges with concentrating plant contracts for local Australian companies including NSW Rutile Mining Co. Pty. Ltd. who in 1963, commissioned York Brothers to build and install a separation plant with feeds of up to 300 ton per hour.
Figure 1561. NSW Rutile Mining Company management and Bill York
Figure 1562. ML-2 Plant operating at Terranora, NSW
Following that project, Cudgen RZ commissioned York Brothers to build in install “Star Nine” at Cudgen, NSW. This was a 60 feet long dredge, with a separation plant that had two 4-deck separators and two 8-bank units of separators for secondary and scavenger cleaning with a through-put of 300 tons per hour. Then there was “Star Ten” commissioned by Cudgen RZ, being an 80 feet long dredge with banks of circular separators built from fiberglass using an automated laminated machine. “Star Ten” had a throughput of some 600 tons per hour.
From the successful commissioning of these processing plants, Associated Minerals Australia Ltd. contracted York Brothers to build a huge plant at Hastings Point on the Northern NSW Coast increasing capacity to over 2000 tons per hour. Following this project Associated Minerals commission York Brothers to construct and install a gigantic plant on Fraser Island with a throughput of over 4000 tons per hour. It was this plant that caught fire and burnt to the ground. It was subsequently rebuilt and back online and operating within twelve months.
It was a thing in the sixties, that the race to space and related alloys development required these special mineral sands such as zircon, rutile, and ilmenite and others. And of course, any gold that could be recovered from the separation process was surely valued. The problem with this form of mining was the huge impact it had on the environmental. It was open cut mining where bull dozers would uncover the natural vegetation on the surface to expose the sands. A huge hole would then be dug and with water. The dredge and plant were then set up on water. The sand that was piled up would then be processed and the tailings set aside for further processing later. The feed of sand into the plant was then systematically delivered by continuing the digging ahead pushing the floating plant along as needed. This would then be directed in a pattern to uncover and process the entire area of the lease. What damage was caused to the natural habitat of flora and fauna was devastating. Any plant or animal living in the affected zone would by wiped out or if possible, would move somewhere else. A complete wiped out, some would say. Environmentalists today would have kittens. It all went through without complaint for a very long time. The various companies in those days made certain assurances to councils that the land would be fully restored, and they did replant shrubs and trees, but it took an eternity to recover. If you were to look today some fifty years later, you would hardly notice, but it came at a heavy price to the native wildlife that can never be recovered. This form of mining was eventually stopped, in the late nineteen hundreds when protestors finally got the message through, and the sand mining was shut down.
My father went on to secure rights to a tin mine at Cooktown, north of Port Douglas, in Queensland and sunk every dollar into this new venture even convincing my mother to lend money from her inheritance to stake the claim. The remote outskirts of Port Douglas in the sixties along with travel back and forth and funding the entire venture eventually proved too much and as history dictates the dream to become a mining magnate failed. He eventually decided to close the mine down without ever recovering an ounce of tin to pay for the mounting bills.