OAMs & AMs
Tim Phillips - The Woodenboat Shop - Sorrento
Whatever date you believe Australia Day should be celebrated, it’s a great opportunity to recognise people in our community who contribute far beyond the expectations of what most would consider a worthwhile life.
Earlier this week there were two recipients who caught my eye. Despite the fact that they both have dedicated a large part of their lives to sailing, building and restoring wooden boats, the paths they have followed are completely different. Working on their craft on either side of Bass Strait they both are deeply deserving of our recognition.
Tim Phillips has been awarded an OAM
for service to sailing and wooden boat restoration.
When people first meet Tim, they often find him a little gruff. He likes things done properly, for two reasons. Firstly, because they look right and secondly because that’s how they work best. His attitude of no-compromise, comes from 1000’s of sea miles aboard fishing boats in some of the harshest water Australia can offer. It’s an environment where second best doesn’t work, and he takes this attitude every day into the yard of the Wooden Boat Shop in Hotham Road, Sorrento.
In the 1970’s when Tim and a group of like-minded friends were messing around in old couta boats they started the Portsea Fishing Boat Regatta (now The Portsea Cup). Already a master builder, he started an informal boat building apprenticeship, restoring the Couta Boat WATTLE with Jack Norling and building the 28’ couta boat SALLY with the legendary Ken Lacco. Later that decade, Tim identified a strong interest among the public for recreational boats with working origins and the Wooden Boat Shop was founded upon a demand to share in the romance and pleasures of wooden boats and the nautical lifestyle.
From a humble garden shed beginning, Wooden Boat Shop has evolved into an operation with five factories over two locations, offering a vast range of services to the wooden boat sailor and a continuous stream of new vessel constructions. With his wife Sally, he still sails hundreds of miles each year, in his legendary sailing cray Boat STORM BAY, or the JANE KERR, or perhaps the loveliest of couta boats the MURIEL.
Meanwhile, Sarah Briana PARRY has been awarded an OAM for service to youth through ship restoration and sailing programs. Captain Sarah spent her early working years as a member of the Royal Australian Navy. After leaving the Navy, she worked as a joiner, later becoming involved in set design and construction for television and theatre, and eventually became a production designer and art director.
Sarah Parry spent more than forty years as a man called Brian Parry. Brian served as a naval diver in Vietnam. He was married and his work on building the square rigger WINDEWARD BOUND earned him recognition as Hobart's Citizen of the Year in 1998. But not long after completing WINDEWARD BOUND Brian decided to become Sarah. She now lives in a steady relationship with Hobart pharmacist and mother of three, Jennie Kay.
In 1984, she found the plans that would eventually become the WINDEWARD BOUND.
While working as a photographer during the 1988 tall ships race, Ms Parry noticed the piecemeal nature of the wood used in the ship she was photographing. It looked like recycled timber."The logic just hit me," she said. Building ships out of recycled timbers was common practice to reuse materials and to keep costs down. Ms Parry set out finding used materials to make her dream come true, discovering scuttled ships left over from the Tasman Bridge collapse in 1975 and a source of wood connected with Hobart's performance history. The Prince of Wales Theatre was a popular spot for live performances and film screenings until its demolition in 1987.
"Every frame in the WINDEWARD BOUND came out of the Prince of Wales Theatre," Ms Parry said. It was also decided that the graffiti and pencil marks etched in the theatre's beams, including love hearts, should be featured and preserved as part of the WINDEWARD BOUND .
"It's a composite of old vessels and old Hobart." More than 200 people helped with the build, from Rotary groups to young offenders assigned to the project as part of their community service. In 1996, 31 years after her original idea, the WINDEWARD BOUND hit the water and set sail for the first time in 1998. Since then Ms Parry has trained 38 shipmasters, hosted more than 3,000 young people on voyage programs and taken more than 7,000 people on short-term trips.