Unloading bags of grain at Port Adelaide, c1918(GN02310)

This image is one of a series of related photographs (GN02307-12) identified as unloading wheat from the schooner 'Gerard' at Port Adelaide. In it men are seen standing beside a grain elevator, with a large sheat stack in the back ground and a wheat handler atop it. Several other men are inspecting or recording the bags.

'Gerard' was a three masted iron hulled schooner that transported bulk cargoes such as grain and phosphate between ports around South Australia and more widely Australia. The labelling raises several questions. First the name of the schooner is not visible in any of the images. Secondly, the Gerard had not been built in 1918; it was built in 1921 in Germany and registered in Port Adelaide only in 1925 (http://passengersinhistory.sa.gov.au/node/926582). It had a chequered record in South Australian waters. Its master was fined in 1932 for overloading the vessel (Advertiser, 9 September 1932, p12), and its hold filled with water the following year damaging most of the cargo ( News, 28 July 1933, p7). In 1934, the Gerard collided with the barque Nellcebee in Spencer Gulf off Wardang Island, as a result of which its master was censured and the master of the Nellcebee had his license suspended (Advertiser, 7 May 1934, p10).