A Short History of the site
This 2.74-hectare site has supported marine activity for over 150 years and continues that tradition today.
Its origins trace to 1843, when Melbourne’s first town clerk recognised the need to survey the unnavigable Yarra River, then reliant on Williamstown watermen to bring cargo upstream. From the mid-nineteenth century, the site operated as a marine yard under the Harbour Master’s department and was home to Victoria’s first patent slip.
In 1878, part of the site became the Melbourne Harbor Trust’s Williamstown Workshops and Slipways, serving the Trust and later the Port of Melbourne Authority as its marine maintenance and shipbuilding facility for over a century, from 1877 until the workshops closed in 1991. In the mid-twentieth century, part of the site also functioned as a dredging depot for the Public Works Department’s Ports and Harbours Division.
The precinct retains structures from these successive phases, including workshops, jetties, slipways, and a former morgue, several of which hold individual State heritage significance alongside their contribution to the precinct as a whole.
In the late 1980s, the State Government moved to outsource port maintenance to private contractors. The Williamstown yard formally closed in 1991, after which the site passed to Parks Victoria, and is managed to this day by the Seaworks Foundation.
