Glenelg, April 12,1948: HMAS BARCOO meets Bart Cummings, and Comic Court, WARREGO offshore - RAN.

4466. Way back at pic NOs 187-191 we produced a series of five images of the 1370-2120-tons [full load] survey frigate HMAS BARCOO driven ashore at West Beach, Glenelg a beachside suburb of Adelaide on Saturday April 11, 1948. Ships in the Port of Adelaide had been hit by a freak storm at midnight on Friday, and BARCOO, with all but 50 of her crew ashore and her engines shut down, was one of four vessels to drag their anchors or break free of moorings, with three freighters seriously damaged in the port area.

 

With houses and other buildings unroofed, there was also a considerable amount of damage ashore. Along with the storm and HMAS BARCOO's dilemma, our story also repeated an account of the miserable experience of a local fisherman, ARCH PUDNEY, who was to spend two nights alone sheltering in a old kiosk, next to an old police shed at the end of the disintegrating Glenelg jetty.

 

Mr Pudney had been called out at the height of the storm to help cast off a police launch ARHIE BADENACH [which was almost immediately driven ashore]. Then, to the great alarm of Mr Pudney and a police constable left with him, the jetty itself began to break up around them. The policeman made a desperate but successful run across the disintegrating structure to safety. But poor Mr Pudney - a non-swimmer - had been too horror-struck by his situation to try it.

 

He spent a terrifying night seeking shelter in the kiosk, also threatening to break up around him.

The next day, five surf life-savinfg smimmers had braved huge waves and debris to reach him, but again the poor man, frozen and demoralised, could not bring himself to get into the rough water with them. He would spend yet another freezing night in the kiosk, before a boat reached him the next day and he was rescued - suffering hypothermia, but otherwise uninjured.

 

These notes were extracted from a Marine Life Society of South Australia online report, which can be found here:

 

www.mlssa.asn.au/nletters/MLSSA_NL_290_July_2002.htm

 

HMAS BARCOO, meantime, had come ashore on the nearby beach, and would remain there for some time [reports of the time BARCOO was grounded vary, from between around 10 days up to several weeks]. The RAN's official website avoids the subject altogether. In any event, BARCOO received little damage, and once a dredge had scoured a channel she was towed back into open water, and departed with her survey companion, the sloop HMAS WARREGO [seen offshore above], under her own steam.

 

Later, the road leading to West beach pier would be named Barcoo Road, and the frigate would remain in the memory of the many hundreds of Glenelg residents, and other Adelaide residents, who turned out to see her.

 

One of these people was a 21-year-old local racing stable employee named James Batholemew Cummings, one of the local Glenelg thoroughbred trainer Jim Cummings's boys. Working then in his dad's stables as a strapper, the dark-haired young man would come down the beach doing slow work every day on a magnificent-looking animal that caught the eye of many sailors as he worked each day around bows of the Navy ship stranded on the low tide sandbanks close to the shore.

 

More than 60 years later, the rider would remember those days and write something about them.

 

But this was happening in the April of 1948. The rider on the horse was young Bart Cummings. And the name of the horse was Comic Court.

 

more next entry.

 

Photo: RAN Historical, Heritage Collection image ID NO. 04826.

 

A COMPENDIUM of links to 30+ HMAS BARCOO images on the Photostream can be found at Pic NO. 6186, here:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/7772799606/in/photostream

Done