Maritime to return to long dormant Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island could become an active recreational-commercial maritime hub with the Sydney Harbour Trust looking to lease the 2.5-hectare docks precinct.

Its envisaged the new public maritime facilities could include short-stay berthing for small vessels.

The Harbour Trust executive director Geoff Bailey said the available space includes 15 buildings with 4500 sq m floor space and a 400m stretch of wharf frontage.

Bailey says the existing small cultural, accommodation and tourism businesses would be complemented by a maritime precinct that acknowledge the island’s maritime past.

The available space is about an eighth of the island which began its colonial settlement usage as a penal colony in the mid 1800s.

It is Sydney’s largest island.

"It would cost millions to get a business plan off the ground, with especially difficult access," one marina industry commentator said.

Previously one of the nation's biggest shipyards, Cockatoo Island has 160 years of maritime history following the construction of the Fitzroy Dock in 1857.

The larger Sutherland Dock was constructed in the 1880’s and by World War I the island had become the naval dockyard of the Royal Australian Navy.

For the next 78 years, Cockatoo Island was Australia’s most significant shipbuilding and marine repair facility with the HMAS Success, launched in 1984, being the last ship to be built on the island.
The dockyard closed in 1992, lying dormant until control was vested in the Trust in 2001.

It was briefly on the late Kerry Packer's radar as a potential casino site in the mid-1980s.

It was opened to the public in 2007, and has since hosted festivals, art installations and tourists, including Cockatoo Island Film Festival, Biennale of Sydney, Project Outpost and Cockatoo Island Camping and Accommodation, with up to 300,000 people visiting annually.

Fitzroy Dock, the only remaining dry dock built using convict labour, is not included in the lease opportunity.