SYMPOSIUM PRESENTERS

This session outlines the history of adapting junk rig for yachts, beginning with Blondie Hasler’s famous Folkboat, Jester.  Hasler modified the rig for use by a single operator from a central control position in the boat, then campaigned Jester in the inaugural Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1960.   

This history is followed by a brief explanation of Hasler’s modifications, the technical aspects of converting yachts to junk rig, plus methods of handling the rig.  There is a very brief mention of other practitioners, such as the American, Tom Colvin, whose designs follow more traditional Chinese rig principles.  The presentation is complemented by a working model of Hasler’s rig, which will be on display elsewhere during the festival. 

Ama diving represents a unique relationship between people and the ocean that has continued for thousands of years in Japan. With a history rooted in coastal communities, ama divers have passed down their knowledge, skills, and sustainable ways of harvesting marine resources through generations. 

In this presentation, I will introduce the world of ama divers from the perspective of someone who has joined this tradition and experienced it firsthand. After working as a photographer in Tokyo, I moved to a small coastal fishing village in Toba, Mie Prefecture, in 2015 and began my life as an ama diver.  

I will share how ama observe the ocean, respect nature, and live with seasonal changes, while also discussing the challenges they face today, including climate change, changes in marine ecosystems, and the difficulty of passing this knowledge on to future generations. 

Through the story of ama divers, I hope to show the importance of preserving the connection between coastal communities and the ocean.

In 2025 David O’Sullivan, from the Western Australian Museum, travelled to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to document past and present maritime traditions in this Indian Ocean territory, nearly 3,000 km from the Australian mainland. The population of these islands primarily identify as Cocos Malay, with their own unique culture, language and history. David’s presentation is an account of his research work among the small communities on Home Island and West Island, with a focus on boatbuilding and sailing practices in these remote islands. 

After 13 months of high adventure, danger and friendship the ‘Fellowship of the Tawali Pasana’ sailed into the history books.  

Jump aboard for a fast-moving, interactive, multimedia presentation where Thor shares the tears and triumphs, laughter and learnings sailing under three PNG master sailors. 

The presentation will begin with a short film created in East Bali that covers the origin myth, history and symbolism of the shape and painting of jukung boats. It will show the traditional building methods and the ceremonies required according to the Hindu dharma customs for the jukung. The daily life of local fishermen and markets for their catch is seen as well as some insights into some traditional cooking and so on. There will be plenty of time for questions to the Balinese who have travelled to Hobart to share their knowledge on all things jukung. 

This presentation focuses on the distinctive wooden boatbuilding and seamanship traditions that connected tropical northern Australian First Nations people with Asia through networks of maritime trade and cultural exchange, for centuries before European settlement.  

Riding the monsoon cycles, people we call Macassans from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi worked with Arnhem Land and Kimberley peoples during annual visits to harvest sea slugs or trepang, an unlikely seafood luxury and aphrodisiac in high demand from Imperial China. The Macassans’ sailing ships, recorded vividly in Australia rock and bark art, were built with ingenious construction techniques that have survived to modern times to win UNESCO recognition as unique cultural heritage. 

Project Interrupt is the story of Heart – a boat built from marine debris collected along the coast of Southern Tasmania.  

Join Samuel McLennan as he shares how discarded ropes, buoys and other marine waste were transformed into a vessel that sailed from Hobart to Sydney. Discover the story behind the boat, the challenges of building and sailing her, and how creativity can transform rubbish into something extraordinary.

Join Matt and Iefke for an informal, interactive conversation about their seven-year journey building Tarkine, a 41ft Tasmanian Oak pilot cutter, from scratch with no prior experience and a leap-of-faith budget.  

Accompanied by a photo showcase, this session is an open floor: bring all your burning questions about building a boat of your own, trade qualifications, technical specifications, surviving a giant project together and what lies ahead.

His company’s Kumundar initiative is designed to be a practical response to these issues, preserving the natural environment and passing on culture, history and wisdom to future generations. 

Join the Derwent Class shenanigans and help us celebrate the Class’s 100th birthday! We’ll crown a World Champion, raise a glass to our remarkable past, and be part of an exciting future as we mark a century of sailing, friendship, competition and community. 

There are about a dozen communities left on earth where people in traditional craft still rely on their sails to carry out meaningful work. They don’t do this for romantic reasons, but because they can’t afford a cheap diesel engine or the fuel to drive it. These working sailing fleets, that were originally responsible for binding humanity into a single ecological and historical system, have, almost by accident, become the last bastion of a disappearing tradition that globalised the human story. 

One such community is the dhow sailors of the East African Coast. 

Mark Chew, was born in Kenya, and returns there every year working as a photographer in the refugee camps and slums of the region for development and aid agencies. He also regularly visits the Indian Ocean coastline, making friends with local sailors, sailing on their boats and trying to understand the history, construction and function of these ancient, magnificent lateen-rigged craft. 

‘Disappearing Dhows’ is a personal memory of the time he has spent sailing dhows on the East African coast. It will be accompanied by his contemporary photographic record of the sailing craft in this part of the world, documenting their construction, their function, their culture, and the people who sail and race them. 

How can an interrupted Indigenous boatbuilding tradition be brought back into practice? Traditional Taiwanese bamboo sailing rafts used Ma bamboo for the hull, yellow-rattan skin for bindings, sea hibiscus fiber for the sail, and paddles and wind for propulsion. This natural-material knowledge was largely interrupted around the 1950s–1960s, then reconstructed with Indigenous communities from 2003 onward.  

Built in 2023, a bamboo sailing raft crossed the Kuroshio Current between Taiwan and Green Island in both directions in June 2024. Elders’ knowledge transformed the craft to improve its buoyancy and stability and Jesse Liu’s team is now planning a round-trip experimental voyage between Taiwan and the coast of China in 2027, to test the proposal that such vessels connected Austronesian peoples across the Taiwan Strait more than 6,000 years ago. 

In 1830 when five escaped convicts were apprehended in London and put on trial for the piracy of HM brig Cyprus in Van Diemen’s Land a year earlier, their encounters with American whalers, Pacific kings and samurai in Japan made headlines around the world. But without evidence, for almost 200 years many of the men’s claims were never believed.  

Following the 2017 discovery that the Cyprus visited Japan, Tim Stone and research partner Aya Hatano have reunited descendants of the convicts and samurai in Japan, and in 2024 with the support of a Churchill Fellowship, Stone retraced the vessel’s ill-fated final voyage, revealing new evidence about the fate of her missing crew and the possible location of the shipwreck.

As Western Australia approaches the tricentenary of Zeewijk (1727) and the quatercentenary of Batavia (1629), these two Dutch East India Company (VOC) shipwrecks in the Houtman Abrolhos remain among the most powerful and confronting episodes in Australia’s pre-colonial maritime past. Both are stories of catastrophe and survival on the edge of the known ‘European world’ — one infamous for mutiny and massacre, the other for endurance and the building of Australia’s first ocean-going vessel. Yet after six decades of archaeological investigation, their significance is still evolving. 

This presentation is based on new research from a partnership between the WA Museum, universities, and collecting institutions in Australia and Europe. The project returns to original VOC archives, re-examining museum collections dispersed across two hemispheres, and applying new analytical and digital techniques.  Through archaeological study of the ‘Batavia’s Graveyard’ victims, re-imaging of the wreck sites and survivor camps, along with a reassessment of objects, the project is recovering the identities, experiences, and material worlds of those aboard. It is also asking what these wrecks mean today. Community research in Geraldton and Fremantle is revealing how VOC heritage lives on in local memory and identity, while parallel work centres on Aboriginal perspectives and representations of early Dutch visitors to their Country.  

Hear from individuals who’ve played key roles in that history, on how to navigate without instruments, how to sail a waka and what it’s like to live on and lead a modern voyaging waka. 

Duyfken is one of the few replicas of a Dutch East India Company vessel that is actively sailing, and the only one in Australia. When Duyfken was built it was unclear if she would be capable as an ocean-going vessel. To the builder’s credit, Duyfken has sailed over many a sea and done ocean crossings. Besides going to sea, she also works to bring history to life and give visitors and crew a taste of what it is to sail and live aboard a Dutch East India vessel back in the early 1600s.  

Launched at this very festival, the Australian Register of Historic Vessels this year celebrates two decades of preserving and promoting the stories of people and vessels who shaped Australia’s maritime history. Join us for an engaging and informative panel discussion on the history of the ARHV, the role it plays, and what the future holds. Facilitated by the Australian National Maritime Museum, we will be joined by past and present contributors to the Register to hear their reflections on the highlights and challenges of running a heritage database with community at its core. 

From the 1870s to the 1910s, Australia’s northern coastal areas were often described as a ‘mis-en-scene of the Canton River’. During this period a fleet of junks and hundreds of sampans were built by Chinese workers in northern Queensland. Junks were built at Cooktown for beche–de-mer fishing, and at many locations along the riverways of Queensland sampans were built to transport produce. The large capacity and versatility of sampans made them ideal for mining ventures as well. At times they were commandeered for flood rescue, mail delivery and as police boats. Yet Chinese vessels do not appear in the canon of Australian ship and small boat building histories. Their ubiquitous presence in Australia’s north in the late 19th and early 20th century needs revisiting and further historical investigation.

Join Pecha Kucha Hobart & AWBF for a casual and relaxed evening featuring an eclectic series of speakers who will present very short, visually-based stories.

Active between 1801 and 1810, Zheng Yi Sao was a Pearl River Delta maritime strategist who commanded around 400 ships and between 40,000 and 70,000 pirates, enforcing discipline, negotiating political settlements and shaping coastal order. She later secured amnesty, retained part of her fleet, retired peacefully, and died in 1844 — an extraordinary ending for a leader of her scale.

Rigger Bob Downes will talk about why new materials should bring old techniques back into the ditty bags of modern professional riggers, using as an example some of the design decisions made while rigging Tally Ho. 

In the middle of the convict transportation era, as the Cascade Female Factory overflowed with female convicts, changes to the probation system led to a sudden need for more convict accommodation. In Hobart, HMS Anson, an ex-warship, ex-lazaret, ex-transportation ship, was used as a probation station, a place for female convicts to live and work for six months following their arrival in Van Diemen’s Land. This strange convict accommodation experiment lasted just six years. This talk will look at the life of the Anson and the role it played in the probation of female convicts. 

During the 19th and 20th centuries in New Zealand girls and women (colloquially called ship girls, tima molls, or boaties) had sex and relationships with foreign seafarers. But while it was accepted that a sailor had a girl in every port, a girl who had a sailor on every ship was an aberrant figure—variously stigmatised, pathologised, criminalised, and locked up. They were also pitied by God-fearing men and women, and feminists. Ship girls saw themselves and their world rather differently.