MID-year is the latest sailing date set for the Western Port Oberon Association’s MV Wyuna to leave Tasmania for Melbourne.
The 64 metre cutter was given to the association in 2013 and plans were made to have it join the submarine Otama as part of a maritime museum in Western Port.
However, both vessels remain tied up in red tape and anchored offshore – the submarine at Crib Point and the Wyuna at Launceston.
Otama association president Max Bryant last week was confident the project would receive a “kick start” once the Wyuna arrives in Melbourne.
He said it would take six weeks to ready the Wyuna to cross Bass Strait, with a stop scheduled at Mornington before heading to Docklands.
“It has to be out of [its anchorage in the Tamar River] by September because of rough weather at that time of year,” Mr Bryant said.
Both the Otama and Wyuna have had problems at their respective anchorages.
In June 2016 the Otama was secured when the state government stepped in to pay for repairs to its moorings.
The vessel’s future and that of the 15-year plan to make it the centrepiece of a maritime museum were jeopardised by the association’s lack of money.
With the Otama safely at anchor the association was free to again concentrate, still unsuccessfully, on raising the millions of dollars needed to establish the maritime museum and carry out work to sail the Wyuna across Bass Strait.
In January the Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions office threatened to apply to the Supreme Court to “seize and dispose of the Wyuna”.
“I acknowledge that such an outcome would be undesirable for the association. I am instructed that the authority, given the effluxion of time and its duty to maintain marine safety, has few if any other options available to it,” crown counsel Sam Thompson stated in a letter to the association’s lawyers, McGuiness & Hosking, Rosebud.
Mr Thompson said the “current situation is untenable” and said a 60-day notice to make the Wyuna seaworthy had been issued on October 21 2015.
“The period within which the association had to comply ended on 21 April 2016. Since then, and notwithstanding the correspondence between us, the situation relating to the Wyuna has not been rectified to the satisfaction of the authority.”
Mr Bryant said last week that the Wyuna remained in the Tamar but that plans for getting her to Melbourne “are slowly going ahead”.
“It’s been a battle – all political – but it’s going to happen.
“The boat will stop in Mornington before sailing up to Station Pier and I am in discussions with Docklands about a berth.”
The Wyuna, a former pilot cutter, was built in 1953 and donated to the association in 2013 for display at the Victorian Maritime Centre/Museum currently at Crib Point.
Hastings MP, Liberal Neale Burgess, promised $1 million to the Otama project during the November 2014 election campaign, but Labor’s win has put plan on the backburner.
“We had confirmation of the grant and that the money would remain, but it seems to have disappeared,” Mr Bryant told The News in February 2015. “Who knows what happens? People play games…”
In June last year Mr Bryant put the cost of the maritime museum at $15 million and said that if either the state or federal governments provide $2 million “seed funding” private investors would become involved.
With Stephen Taylor
First published in the Western Port News – 9 May 2017
