Volunteer opportunites available for
The Backbone of Wattle
Volunteers, young and old, male and female, are the backbone of Wattle.
With this restoration stage of our project almost complete, our volunteers can focus more on the operational tasks required to run WATTLE. This includes:
- Deck-hands
- Hospitality Staff
- Wharf-hands
- Boiler Firemen (fire starting, fuel management and monitoring)
- Engineers (responding to orders from the helm to open and close steam valves)
- Qualified Masters (navigating and steering the ship
- Quartermaster (relieving the Captain on the helm)
All positions will receive suitable training.
Restoration Project
Our Saturday numbers are regularly 16 to 18 people, and sometimes more. The volunteer contribution to the refurbishment of Wattle is estimated to have exceeded 40,000 hours since work began in 2009. The gathering each Saturday at lunch for the volunteer crew was a wonderful indicator of progress on the restoration of the ship.
People came together and chatted about what they had been doing, whether under or on top of the boiler, in the engine room, the wheelhouse, or the fore or after compartments. Others may have been in the shed painting, cleaning parts, creating wood cabinets, seats and flag lockers, or working in one of the containers quarter-mastering, dismantling, grinding and shaping.
Learning sessions were scheduled for lunchtimes on topics such as ship stability, buoyancy, bunkering safety, super-heated steam, with more practical instruction in welding, woodwork, thread cutting and gasketmaking.
Our volunteers built up a camaraderie that goes beyond just turning up on a Saturday – we also took an active interest in each other's health and well-being. Support was given to those with health issues, problems were aired (but not necessarily solved!) and knowledge and resources were exchanged, providing everyone with comradeship and valuable social support.