Crawley Boating, Sea Scouts & Sailability

4. Postwar boating and Sailability WA

The end of WW2 was followed by further development of Matilda Bay for sailing, rowing and other recreational activities. Established organisations continued using the foreshore, while clubs moving from the Perth city waterfront built new premises at Crawley. The Sea Scouts maintained their presence at Pelican Point and decades later, Sailability WA introduced supported sailing and training for people with disability.

Royal Perth Yacht Club

The club moved from the city foreshore to Crawley in 1953. Founded in 1865, it had previously occupied premises at the foot of William Street. Its new Matilda Bay base provided facilities for yacht racing, recreational sailing and club activities.

Perth Dinghy Sailing Club

Established in 1903, the club opened its new Crawley clubhouse in 1960. Members helped construct the building, which continues to support dinghy racing and junior sail training.

Mounts Bay Sailing Club

The club was formed in 1897 to provide affordable competitive sailing in smaller boats. For its first four decades, members stored their boats in Perth foreshore boatsheds and held meetings and social functions at various venues around the city.

Its first dedicated clubhouse was built in 1939. The club’s history records the building’s use by the United States Navy during the war. Its present clubhouse was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with members and other volunteers contributing labour.

Mounts Bay had already achieved success before the war. In 1905 it sent a boat and sailors to an interstate championship and in 1907, its 18-footer Aeolus won an Australian championship.

During the postwar years, the club developed its junior sailing activities. One addition was Australia’s first fleet of Cherub dinghies, commissioned for the 1960-61 season.

The Cherub was a small racing dinghy designed by New Zealand naval architect John Spencer in 1951. Mounts Bay member Basil Wright brought together six sailors whose sons were around the same age. The group commissioned six boats for teenagers who’d outgrown their smaller Pelican dinghies.

A fleet referred to the boats sailing and racing together as a class. The Cherubs filled a gap between children’s boats and the larger boats requiring bigger crews.

In 1979, Mounts Bay built a 30-pen jetty, adding facilities for cruising boats to its existing beach-launched sailing activities. Construction relied on volunteer labour, member loans and commitments from people leasing the pens. The number of pens was doubled in 1994.

The club later hosted the 2019 International Moth World Championships and received the WA Club of the Year award in 2020. An Australian Sailing profile recorded 350 members in 2022, including 150 full ordinary members and 200 social, junior and intermediate members.

Its activities have included regular racing, junior and adult instruction, school sailing and state, national and international competitions. Government assistance has included a $50,000 grant announced in March 2026 for that year’s International Moth Nationals and World Championships.

University rowing

The University of Western Australia Boat Club was established in 1919, when UWA students began competing in intervarsity rowing championships.

UWA’s centenary history dates construction of its Matilda Bay boatshed to 1929. Perth citizens helped finance the project by purchasing debentures, lending money towards the construction to support university rowing.

The US Navy added an upper floor during the Second World War. The building subsequently continued as the club’s rowing headquarters.

The club merged with the UWA Women’s Rowing Club in 1980. Additional boat storage became available with the construction of the UWA Watersports Complex in 2006. By its centenary in 2019, the club had 260 members and had helped produce Commonwealth Games and world championship medallists, as well as seven Olympians.

Membership extends beyond currently enrolled students. The club provides opportunities for beginners, experienced competitors, masters rowers and former members, along with community learn-to-row courses and a Shenton College rowing program.

Training varies between squads. Its published guide has listed two or three sessions a week for novices and three to six for its open competitive squad, combining river sessions with training on land. High-performance rowers train throughout the year. Crews compete at regattas, pennant events and state championships, with high-performance members also representing the club nationally.

Membership fees, race-entry charges, fundraising and donations contribute to its operation. Members help maintain boats, raise funds and run regattas.

A centenary fundraising campaign launched in 2019 reached its $1 million target in 2024. Donations, a gala dinner, auctions, crowdfunding and a 24-hour rowing fundraiser contributed to the Future Fund, an invested fund providing ongoing support for equipment, facilities and coaching.

Pelican Point Sea Scouts

The Pelican Point Sea Scouts are based at Camp Cornwell, at the end of Australia II Drive in Crawley. The camp was named after John Travers “Jack” Cornwell, a former Scout and 16-year-old Royal Navy sailor who remained at his gun position aboard HMS Chester, despite being mortally wounded during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. He died two days later and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

The headquarters occupy riverfront land at Pelican Point near UWA, with beach access for boating activities.

Previously known as Point Currie after Captain Mark John Currie, the point takes its name from the pelicans that rested on its sandbars. Pelicans can still be seen in the surrounding Swan Estuary Marine Park.

Formerly known as the 1st WA Troop Sea Scouts, the group traces its origins to a Sea Scout patrol established in Albany by teacher Henry “Hal” McKail and records its continuous operation from 1913.

Accounts differ on the dates of its beginnings and move to Perth. A 1997 government statement dates McKail’s Albany activities to 1909 and the move to Pelican Point in 1920. A later account published by the conservation department gives 1926 for the move to Matilda Bay and 1957 for occupation of the present site.

Their early facilities included floating headquarters aboard the former coastal steamer Dolphin, moored near the site of the present University Boat Club.

Sea Scouting combined the normal Scout program with rowing, sailing, navigation, swimming, boat handling and maintenance. Former members recalled learning boatbuilding, woodwork and metalwork from McKail and older Scouts with trade experience.

During the war, Scouts helped staff a Volunteer Air Observer Corps observation post at their headquarters. Aircraft movements were identified, recorded and reported by telephone. Historical accounts also describe assistance with ferrying personnel to flying boats, clearing floating debris, making camouflage nets and helping Water Police.

The group continued its boating and youth activities after the war. Its fleet has included rowing tenders, sailing dinghies, cruising yachts and motor launches.

In August 1997, Premier Richard Court christened its new five-metre rescue boat McKail. An $8,500 donation from Subiaco North Rotary Club and Scout fundraising paid for the boat, while the Scout Association’s WA branch provided the motor.

Scouts WA’s 2021-22 annual report recorded a further $36,525 for a new safety boat through its Lotterywest grant reporting. The boat was intended to support activities for 120 young members, including training in navigation and responding to emergencies. The report also described members assisting stranded boats through towing, ferrying, retrieving and repairs.

Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers

The different Scout sections cater for successive age groups, with members taking greater responsibility for organising activities as they grow older.

Under the current Scouts WA age ranges, Joey Scouts cater for children aged five to eight, Cubs for eight to eleven, Scouts for eleven to fourteen, Venturers for fourteen to eighteen and Rovers for eighteen to twenty-five.

Girls and young women were admitted to the older sections of Scouts Australia in 1973, with younger sections becoming mixed during the 1980s. Pelican Point now includes boys and girls.

Its water-safety connections have included Royal Life Saving WA, which provided aquatic rescue equipment to Pelican Point and other Sea Scout groups in 2017.

Hal McKail

Henry “Hal” McKail, known to his Scouts as “Skipper”, was a teacher from Albany and a member of the McKail family associated with Windy Hill at Lower Kalgan.

He established the first Lower Kalgan School in 1909 and formed an early Sea Scout patrol in Albany. After moving to Perth through the Education Department, he continued developing Sea Scouting and became involved with the Royal Life Saving Society. Former pupils remembered him as science master at Perth Boys’ School.

His activities also extended to historical investigation. In 1937, after a bushfire exposed remains of the early settlement on Garden Island, McKail and Scouts examined the site and mapped visible building remains.

He died in June 1944, aged 57. The Pelican Point rescue boat christened in 1997 was named in his memory.

The floating headquarters, Dolphin

The former coastal steamer Dolphin provided an early floating base for the Sea Scouts at Matilda Bay.

A WA Museum record describes a likely matching vessel built in 1882 by A. & E. Brown at Birkenhead, Port Adelaide. It was a wooden steamship built on iron frames, measuring 30.6 metres long, and was initially owned by the South Australian Fishing Company.

In January 1888, it was purchased by Fremantle owners David Symon, Cecil Henry Hammond and George Yorke Hubble. It later passed to the WA Lighterage Stevedoring & Transport Company and was stripped for use as a lighter, carrying cargo rather than operating as a complete steamship.

The museum records later use as a Sea Scout training vessel, followed by abandonment near Penguin Island and sinking in 1930.

Sailability WA

Sailability WA began operating at Royal Perth Yacht Club around 2000, following the success of Australian sailors at the Sydney Paralympic Games. Noel Robins, Jamie Dunross and Graeme Martin won gold in the three-person Sonar keelboat class.

The organisation provides supported sailing and instruction for people with disability. Participants can enjoy a recreational outing, learn to crew or steer a boat, or develop the skills needed to sail independently and compete.

Its supported outings use larger keelboats and smaller Hansa dinghies, with volunteer skippers and crew. Hoisting equipment allows participants who require assistance to transfer from their wheelchairs aboard keelboats. A partnership with Fishability WA also provides motorboat outings aboard Nev Thomas II, where participants can remain in their own wheelchairs.

Learn-to-sail activities use two-person Hansa 303 dinghies. Family members and support people can also learn, allowing them to sail together. Experienced sailors can progress into club racing and state, national or international competitions.

Volunteers prepare and maintain boats, assist with boarding, skipper vessels, provide shore support and operate safety boats. Donations, grants and fundraising events, including Finding Freedom, help support the program and purchase equipment.

In January 2006, Sailability WA and Royal Perth Yacht Club hosted the International Federation of Disabled Sailors World Championships, welcoming sailors from 15 nations.

Members subsequently achieved Paralympic success. At Beijing in 2008, Rachael Cox won silver in the SKUD 18 class, while Colin Harrison, Graeme Martin and Russell Boaden won bronze in the Sonar class. Harrison, Boaden and Jonathan Harris won Sonar gold at Rio in 2016.

Alongside competitive sailing, the organisation continues providing regular supported outings and instruction on Matilda Bay.

The proposed ferry terminal

The proposed Matilda Bay ferry terminal has raised concerns about how existing boating, rowing and supported sailing activities would share the water with regular passenger services.

The terminal is planned for central Matilda Bay as part of the ferry expansion linking Elizabeth Quay, Matilda Bay and Applecross. The government selected the site after assessing five locations, including alternatives near Pelican Point and the former JoJo’s restaurant at Nedlands Jetty.

Sailability WA supports ferry transport to UWA but has called for the terminal to be moved to Nedlands Jetty. It is part of Safety on Swan, a coalition that also includes Royal Perth Yacht Club, Mounts Bay Sailing Club and UWA Boat Club.

The groups have raised concerns about ferry routes crossing recreational waters, reduced space for training and racing, vessel wake and the safety of children, learners and sailors with disability.

For Sailability, the concern involves the waters used for supported outings and learning to sail. Its activities depend on accessible boarding facilities, suitable boats, volunteers and enough space to teach and practise.

The government maintains that central Matilda Bay provides the best overall balance of safety, environmental impact and transport access. Its published assessment states that existing water activities can continue with adjustments. It identifies different safety and environmental constraints at the alternative sites.

The Public Transport Authority states that the east-west approach to and departure from the terminal would be limited to eight knots. Sailability has separately raised concerns about proposed higher-speed exemptions elsewhere along the route.

As at 21 October 2026, terminal development approvals had been granted, while the PTA’s public information continued to describe the final route as subject to stakeholder input. The extent of any changes to sailing, rowing and Scout activities remained disputed.

Sailability had not announced closure. Its stated position was that the proposed location raised safety concerns for its programs, while the government maintained that ferry operations and existing activities could be managed together.