The brief from the chief reporter was simple enough: Do a piece on the history of Onehunga Wharf. No problem. Start making the phone calls to the various historical socieities. They had heaps of information about Onehunga but zilch on the wharf. Likewise the helpful and enthusiastic contacts at Business Associations. How about Auckland City Council? The Maritime Museum? Ports of Auckland? A whole day passed. I had RSI from phone overuse and the digital clock was tick tick ticking, if that's what digital clocks do. OK, do that old-style reporting and head down to the wharf itself. 'Hard hat area' a number of signs said. I didn't have one with me. 'Cars and pedestrians' another sign said. There wasn't a soul in sight but there were indicators that a whole heap of things happened in these here parts. Huge warehouses. Perhaps ten fishing boats. A large ship loading or unloading something beside the Holcim Cement complex. Drive around, smell the sea, sense the activity going on somewhere. I just couldn't see it. Drive around a bit more and oh, there's a door open. And straight into the office of Brian Jarman, Port Coordinator, Onehunga. He was busy and looked it, directing what seemed to be shipping movements over his RT. "No, you'll have to wait until about 11 tonight. We're chocker but I've got one going out and you can take that berth. Yeah, keep in touch". He could give me a moment but Brian wasn't big on the history of the wharf. He'd transferred from Auckland to Onehunga in 1986. In 1990 the port was closed to international shipping and now operates as a coastal port carrying every imaginable kind of cargo to and from other New Zealand ports. Brian's back on the RT. He seems to know the people he's talking to. They know him. Few words are wasted but what is obvious is that Brian just loves his job. "It has a wide spectrum of challenges and cuties and no two hours in any day are the same. You can be cruising one minute and flat out the next. There's never a time when there's nothing to do", he says. Onehunga Wharf is one of Pacifica Shipping's main coastal ports with two of their ships in and out every week. They're loaded with maybe 250 containers. Lots of work involved there. Holcim Cement has two vessels and they're in port every couple of days offloading cement from Westport. Moana Pacific, Sanfords and Simunovich fishing

companies have about twelve trawlers fishing along the west coast throughout the year. And don't forget the annual tuna fleet that follows the migrating fish along the coast between December and March. That's full on, perhaps 150 vessels. "We have berths for about 20 of the trawlers", Brian says, "and while logistics can sometimes be a nightmare, everyone works in together and makes it happen. They're all coming and going, unloading, fuelling up, icing up, carrying out repairs. Sometimes there can be maybe 400 or 500 people in the port then. It's a real exercise keeping everyone happy". Brian concedes he's a bit like an air traffic controller. His responsibilities certainly seem as great. Oh, and Brian mentions he also mans the tug as part of his job. "The port's really grown in the last ten years and just got bigger and bigger. This is no out of the way quiet little place. Always something going on. Four warehouses on the site are leased out to freight forwarders, trucks come and go, receiving and dispatching deliveries seven days a week", Brian says. Eddie from one of the stevedoring companies on site walks in. Know anything about the history of the wharf, Eddie? He thinks it may have been established in 1913 and before that the main wharf on the coast was at Cornwallis. Is that right, Brian? We look blankly at each other. What about that infamous bar (in the harbour, silly, not the one across the road), you know, the bar at the entrance to the Manukau Harbour where the Orpheus was wrecked in 1863 and the Royal Navy banned its ships from using the harbour? There was no wharf then, Brian and Eddie agree. But yes, the bar can be a potential problem in any sou-westerly or westerly. "If the swell on the bar is more than four metres, access to the harbour is very marginal", says Brian. "On average we'd officially close the bar about twice a year. At other times the ships' masters make the call themselves to wait for a later tide, hoping conditions will settle down". One is in no doubt that Brian and Port Signalman Evan McGregor, who lives at South Head overlooking the bar, have safety as their number one priority. The RT squawks again and Brian's back to shipping business. I have an hour or so until deadline. I haven't got the story the chief reporter wanted but hey, that's the way it goes. Perhaps a reader has all that information at their fingertips and I just didn't find the right person. The history of Onehunga Wharf? Well now, that's another story.