Station Pier crane reconstruction
Station Pier, Waterfront Place, Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
In 1949, two British Stothert & Pitt portal cranes of the straight-jibbed type were installed at the seaward end of Melbourne’s Station Pier. They were decommissioned in 1975 but remained in place until 1996. In 2014, one was reinstalled as part of the heritage interpretation scheme for the pier.
Station Pier is a bustling operational cruise line terminal and naval docking point, making it difficult to accommodate a heritage crane. Consequently, the reinstalled crane has been located on the West Finger Pier, which is attached to the main pier at the shoreline. It has been carefully rebuilt using conserved parts from both originals, and now helps tell the story of the importance of Station Pier to the city and its links to the rest of the world.
The Stothert & Pitt cranes once took care of cargo loading and unloading on the main pier, moving up and down its length on rail tracks. Eleven cranes in all operated on Station Pier in the post World war II period.
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Heritage data
first installed 1949
crane design Stothert & Pitt
photos : Jane Joyce and Lovell Chen
first historical photo : Station Pier 1950, courtesy State Library of Victoria
second : crane in use, 1954, source unknown
