Jane Gifford re-launch with a little help from our friends
Event 11am to 2pm Wharf Street, Warkworth
Not Exactly a Picnic: Navigating the Mahurangi was never a picnic for the Jane Gifford. But today, with the river choked with sediment, the scow will focus minds on the now urgent need for strategic dredging. photographer Tudor Collins, 1935
‘We’re having the re-launching and homecoming celebrations for the Jane Gifford a fortnight on Saturday there.’
‘Hang on Hugh, I’ll just pull over.’
‘We’re wondering if the Friends would be prepared to mobilise its Mahurangi Regatta hamburger team there; we are expecting about two thousand people.’
Two and a bit weeks was probably the perfect amount of notice: Just enough time to order ingredients and contact volunteers, and a minimum of time to stress about the implications of producing one thousand burgers—the number that Hugh Gladwell suggests should be catered for—in two hours!
The re-launch of the Jane Gifford will be one of Warkworth’s proudest moments, and it is a singular honour for Friends of the Mahurangi to be helping to provide the hospitality.
The revival of the scow Jane Gifford could hardly have been completed at a better time, in respect to her intended new role as flagship for the restoration of the Mahurangi River. With one Auckland Council set to replace seven disparate, and sometimes disfunctional, local bodies, it is important for the Mahurangi that the momentum established by one of those entities, the Auckland Regional Council, is maintained.
What better way to keep this way on, than with 60 tonnes of scow!
Hugh Gladwell’s vision is for the Jane Gifford to similarly raise awareness of the plight of the Mahurangi, as did the similarly-sized sloop Clearwater the plight of the Hudson.
The replica Hudson River sloop was the brainchild of folk singer Pete Seeger, whose 90th birthday is to celebrated with a Springsteen-led Clearwater benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, on 3 May.
On the Saturday of the Jane Gifford re-launch, it will be just one day shy of forty years since the Clearwater was launched. In that time she has served as a floating classroom educating some 13,000 children and adults a year—motivating, amongst other things, legions into careers in the environmental sciences.
Given that navigating the Mahurangi River today will be tight squeeze for the Jane Gifford’s ample 6-metre hips, the scow is about to relentlessly focus attention on the elevated sediment accumulation rate that prompted the Auckland Regional Council action. The council contemplates that its five year’s of riparian protection work now be backed up with further commitment, of ten years.
With the buxom Jane Gifford back in residence at Warkworth, her homeport from 1921 to about 1938, it is improbable that if anything slips through the cracks during the establishment of the new Auckland Council, it won’t be the Mahurangi revival.
Six-dollar venison hamburgers may not match the fare that will accompany US$1250-a-seat ‘legacy’ tickets to Pete Seeger’s birthday bash, but maybe another four decades from now…
And speaking of legacy, that being created by the Jane Gifford project’s prime mover, Peter Thompson, is worthy of comparison with that of Seeger:
- Lucy Moore Park
- Warkworth Wharf
- Wilson Cement Works Walkway
- Steamboat Kapanui
- Scow Jane Gifford
- Dredging the Mahurangi River
Meantime, for we lesser mortals, it is all hands to the pumps on Saturday 16 May—even if it is simply passing out drinks to the burger galley slaves, every ounce of assistance will be welcome.
Because the return of the Jane Gifford could prove to mark the commencement of the concerted restoration of the Mahurangi, following the deforestation of the 1800s, Saturday 16 May could prove to be an historic event of singular significance.
Joining the volunteers is an opportunity to help make that history, and help do the Jane Gifford and the Mahurangi proud!
Offers of assistance Please contact David Mooney, 422 0521 or the editor, 422 0872