Official invitation to the Jane Gifford Re-Launch and Homecoming Celebration

Event Saturday 16 May 2009, 11am onward
Wharf Street, Warkworth

Poster Girl: The poster for the re-launch and homecoming celebration for the Jane Gifford—the scow is about to become the poster child for the restoration of the Mahurangi River. poster Lyn Bergquist

The Jane Gifford Restoration Trust cordially invites everybody to the re-launch and homecoming celebration for the 101-year-old scow Jane Gifford.

The trust plans a huge welcome-home celebration, beginning with the scow travelling upstream on the Mahurangi River to its new berth in the Warkworth township. She will be followed by a flotilla of classic and other craft. There will be entertainment, bands, wine and food and Warkworth will hold a nautical theme market day. The welcome will almost mark the end of a restoration project that some said could never be done.

The Jane Gifford was built at the shipyard of Davy Darroch at Omaha in 1908. She is a ketch-rigged, flat-bottomed vessel 19.8‍ ‍metres long and a displacement of 60‍ ‍tonnes.

Her first work was carrying granite from the mines in Coromandel. She carried cattle, people, metal for public works, and shell from the Firth of Thames for the Wilson Cement Works in Warkworth. For more than 14 years early last century, she worked under owner–skipper Reg Collins.

In 1934, she left her berth in Warkworth to work from the Tamaki Estuary.

Then in 1985 she was sold to the Waiuku Museum Society and used to tkae passengers for cruises on the Manukau Harbour. In 2000 she was in a very poor state of repair and was shipped across the Auckland isthmus to Okahu Bay, where she sat and deteriorated due to a lack of funding.

An enthusiastic few decided it was time to bring her home. In August 2005 she was transported back to Warkworth, Peter Thompson and Hugh Gladwell established a restoration trust and work began. Almost $700‍ ‍000 dollars later and a huge amount of work by skilled and volunteer workers, the Jane Gifford has been almost completely rebuilt.

She will once again ply the Mahurangi River and the Hauraki Gulf as a commercial operation and providing youth training opportunities.

The Jane Gifford will be a very significant piece of the Warkworth’s history and will be based in the township. Some $80‍ ‍000 is still needed to complete her restoration. Work will continue until she is in survey and in fulltime service, later in the year.