Port Germein wooden jetty, Australia's longest from 1880s, a busy exporter of wheat despite shallow limits
The jetty at Port Germein, north of Port Pirie on the eastern shore of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, with the southern Flinders Ranges in the distance.
Port Germein wooden jetty, opened in 1881 and extended in 1883, at 1,676 metres (more than a mile) was the longest in South Australia and, reputedly, the southern hemisphere.
The jetty at Port Germein, about 19 kilometres north of Port Pirie on the eastern shore of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, was built by John Wishart, using local sugar and red gum trees.
At its peak, Port Germein was the largest grain-loading port in Australia, servicing ocean-going sailing ships taking produce from South Australia to Europe. But the shallowness of its inlet was soon a problem. At first, either side of the jetty had to be dredged to accommodate ships. When the clipper ships became larger, it was common for 12 to 14 having to moor a further 800 metres offshore and be loaded, with wheat transferred first to lighters (flat-bottom barges) that took it to the ships.
Bagged wheat came to Port Germein from the local area, the eastern side of the southern Flinders Ranges via Port Germein Gorge (opened in 1879 through the southern Flinders Ranges) and from the Spencer Gulf’s west coast in smaller boats. About 100,000 bags of wheat were loaded per year. A small locomotive engine was used to haul heavy loads along the long jetty to waiting ships.
The opening of the port brought an influx of workers from Adelaide, and by 1900 the population of the town, with its own municipality, had grown to more than 300. A lighthouse was erected at the end of the jetty in 1894, replacing the Port Germein lightship. The lighthouse was manned until 1917, when it was replaced by an AGA flashing light. (The lighthouse was restored in 1975 to the historic Port Germein jetty site that was listed on the South Australian heritage register.)
The advent of steam-power ships, ending the windjammer era, and the extension of rail past Port Germein in 1934 brought its life as a working port to a halt in the 1940s. Stones and red bricks strewn along the sides of the jetty are the relics of ballast discarded by ships loading at the port.
The jetty experienced damaging storms over the year and notably in 2016 and its restored length was reduced to about 1,500 metres.
The origin of Port Germein’s name was unsettled. One theory argued that captain John Germein discovered the inlet while exploring the coast in 1840; another said it was his brother Samuel who found it while taking stores to explorer Edward Eyre at the head of Spencer Gulf in 1840.