Images(3)

Makara

Vessel numberHV000666

Vessel Registration NumberIZ745Q

Builder Bjarne Halvorsen 1916-1994

Date1959

DimensionsVessel Dimensions: 18.29 m × 17.07 m × 4.5 m × 1.72 m (60 ft × 56 ft × 14.75 ft × 5.65 ft)

DescriptionMAKARA is 18.29m (60 ft) long, carvel planked and powered by twin Gardner’s 6LW. The original owner of MAKARA was Sir William Gaston Walkley. He was founder of Ampol Petroleum in 1935. In 1956 through his foundation he established the Walkley Awards recognising excellence in print journalism. MAKARA’s design and styling is a contrast to the raised deck craft built by the family firm. It has a curved sheer and bulwark, a short overhanging stem, flared topsides forward and showed a higher cabin line forward of the wheelhouse and aft open cockpit compared to the Lars Halvorsen craft. It retains these proportions but now had modern windows installed and wider and longer cabin top over the wheelhouse and cockpit.

BJARNE Halvorsen left the family business Lars Halvorsen Sons soon after the Second World War and started his own yard in Berrys Bay, where Barnett, Ford and Woodleys also operated. His firm mainly built trawlers and other commercial craft. MAKARA is one of the few recreational craft that they built. It represents his style and construction of a luxury cruiser and compares very well with the same type of craft from the more famous Lars Halvorsen Sons business.

The vessel was launched as IMPALA and retained this name until 1990. In 1989 a modification to the wheelhouse was carried out and 2 masts were added. The fishing cockpit aft was turned into a lazarette. In year 2000 the vessel was overhauled and repaired where required at Norman Wright’s yard in Brisbane.

On February 2nd 2011 MAKARA was moored at Port Hinchinbrook when Cyclone Yasi hit. At the time this was the worst cyclone ever in Australia and the world. MAKARA survived and through media images and reports on the damage from Cyclone Yasi it was seen worldwide amongst the hundreds of vessels washed ashore at the port. MAKARA was later repaired at Norship Cairns and remains in the region.

SignificanceMAKARA is a wooden motor cruiser built by Bjarne Halvorsen in Berrys Bay NSW in 1959 MAKARA represents an important chapter in the well-known Halvorsen family boatbuilding story, where father Lars and his sons, Harold, Carl, Bjarne, Magnus and Trygve who together managed Lars Halvorsen Sons for many years before three of the sons left to form their own firms.

MAKARA interprets the skills and background to Bjarne Halvorsen who managed his own business from the late 1940s. In particular it shows how Bjarne was able to capture a section of the luxury cruiser market that was then largely dominated by the competition from his family company. His firm built few recreational craft and this is a rare surviving example of his yard’s output.