The MV Cape Don – Are Her Days Done?

John Adderley, once second mate and later chief officer of the Cape Don in the 1970s, and later again a city planner and Freo fella through and through, reports in the fate of MV Cape Don and wonders about her future.

An important bit of Fremantle’s marine heritage is sinking in Sydney!

As photographed in 2014 in Balls Head Bay.

The lighthouse tender MV Cape Don is presently rusting away in Sydney harbour, far, far away from her home in Fremantle. 

Although properly recognised as of national marine heritage and supported by efforts of the MV Cape Don Society, she is now losing the battle for her conservation. Her demise seems probable following the recent seizure of the ship by the NSW Government because of the prospect of harbour pollution.

Home ported and registered in Fremantle, and for many years regularly berthed and serviced on Victoria Quay, the Cape Don was a small vessel of 2,100 tonnes, specially designed to service the comprehensive range of navigation equipment and lighthouses along the entire coast of Western Australia. She was owned by the Commonwealth Department of Shipping and Transport and serviced from the Department’s marine depot in Mouat Street, Fremantle.

Her range included the hundreds of islands of the Recherche Archipelago east of Esperance, Eclipse island south of Albany, all the way up the west and north-west coast, across the Northern territory to Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

She serviced lights and beacons on many remote islands, reefs and atolls including Monte Bello, Bedout Island, Scott Reef, Browse Island, Rowley Shoals, Ashmore Reef, Troughton Island, Adele Island …. and many more. She also serviced and  maintained shipping channel buoys and markers to major harbours along the WA coast.

Built in Australia in 1963, a handsome and well designed ship, she had state of the art manouevreability with variable pitch propellors, directional sonar, and of course radar, all required for precision pilotage. Painted white with a buff funnel, she had the appearance of a streamlined motor yacht. Cape Don carried a small fleet of work boats, a speed boat and an amphibious vehicle (LARC) for transporting heavier loads of equipment on to islands where the terrain was steep or the installation was distant from shore. 

Cape Don was a regular caller in to north west ports Broome, Derby, Wyndham and Darwin.

In the 60s and 70s, her Master was Captain John Marion and her Chief Engineer was Bernie Huisman. The Boatswain was ‘Ozzie’ Osborne. Just a few names among many and those who followed in the 80s and 90s. There would be numerous families in and around Fremantle (and indeed north-west ports) that would have been associated with the Cape Don and her crews and her good works to safeguard shipping along our Western Australian coastline.

It seems a pity that this fine ship, Cape Don, is now seemingly remote and institutionally forgotten in WA. 

A role then, for our State Government and Maritime Museum to highlight and help redress this possible imminent loss to our important marine heritage? 

*By John Adderley

And here are some wonderful small sketches John Adderley has made of MV Cape Done over the years that reflect his real admiration for her.

For more in the current fate of MV Cape Done look here.

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