Pioneers of Pine Point (Annie Watt Memorial) Print Page

The memorial (also known as the "Annie Watt" Memorial) commemorates the pioneers, those who sailed the ketches, and Clydesdale horses. It marks the centenary of the District of Muloowurtie from 1874 to 1974.

Muloowurtie was proclaimed in 1874 and the name was changed to Pine Point in 1940. 

The ketch was a two masted vessel typically about 70 -feet long. Ketches were often made from timber salvaged from larger vessels and many were built in Tasmania, where there was abundant timber and good shipwrights. When Yorke Peninsula was settled the ketches were the main means of transport and the South Australian and Tasmanian ketches were probably the first in the world to be fitted with a sliding centreboard which allowed them to come closer to shore in the shallow ports. They thus earned the nickname of "Stingray Disturbers". The ketches were the main means of transporting the grain grown on the Peninsula until the outbreak of the Second World War. When they were commandeered for service in the Pacific Islands, few returned to the Peninsula.

The last of the wooden ketches, the "Annie Watt" built in 1870, is now at the Maritime Museum in Birkenhead. In 1903 Mr J. F. Harvey, owner of the Thomas, Annie, Florence Maud, Malcolm and the Annie Watt, built five landings to make the loading of his fleet easier. Cargo was unloaded at the landings by horse and dray. By the 1920s only the Pine Point landing remained in use. In the 1920s the Harbours Board upgraded the wharf to enable better ship loading. They dredged berths and channels, erected a new shed and made a new cutting to the wharf. The channel leading out to open sea was painstakingly dredged by buckboard with two clydesdale horses pulling a scoop. In 1927 the wharf was upgraded to include a slide for bags from the clifftop to the ketches and the landing.

Location

Details

Dedication