Every Picture Tells A Story: Cracking Open a Keg on Cockatoo Island, 1925.

Here’s the auspicious launching of the HMAS Warrego II a Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney Harbour circa 1925.

Trainspotters here will remember that I did a post a few years ago about the creepy and now largely abandoned Cockatoo Island and it’s industrial relics. Read it here.

Well this photo recalls when Cockatoo Island was in its prime. As was custom, the shipwrights who had readied the vessel for launch on the slipway were rewarded with a keg of beer. The barrel is on a stand outside a shed on Cockatoo Island. I couldn’t think of a more Australian excuse for a party!

Thanks to the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Sam Hood (1872-1953) was a Sydney photographer with a passion for ships. His 60-year career spanned the romantic age of sail and two world wars.