Earl - 11. Earl Chapter 11

Within a very short six weeks, the approval was given for the project, that will involve the construction of a new wharf, plus 16 kilometres of new rail to link the main rail line to this new wharf. With exactly 50 acres of land designated for this project, to be on the western side of the point, with the wharf going in a north-westerly direction from just 350 metres south of the point, with all mangrove and shrub vegetation on the north and eastern sides of the point not to be disturbed.

Along with this 18-month construction project at Darwin, in Henderson just south of Fremantle, another project was already underway, with the construction of a smaller version of Ocean City, to be known as Harbour City. With just four levels instead of 7, this harbour city will be the main hub of the harbour, bringing back control of the harbour to the Northern Territory Government.

The building will have a Harbour traffic control tower, weather station, Customs & Quarantine offices, and accommodation for the all 12 operations and 20 general staff, living at the city, who are required to operate the city, plus an additional 14 staff who work during the day and travel to and from the City each day by transport boat.

Like the previous city, it will have wind turbine and solar power generators and power station, a water desalination plant, a waste treatment plant, and the accommodation and recreation facilities for the resident staff, plus on the roof of the top level there are two helicopter pads.

The harbour city would be a surprise addition to the project that will be known only by the senior staff of Lloyd Family Corp, and will be transported to Darwin by ship once it is completed, and it will be located just 250 metres off the northern tip of Wickham Point.

When the city is almost ready for the 1850 nautical mile, 5-day journey, then the consortium will notify the NT Government that it will be providing facilities for harbour control, and ask them to put together a team of 14 staff ready to commence taking over control of harbour traffic, as well as meteorology staff and customs & quarantine staff, and the Chief Minister’s office was given a list of required staff needed to run the operations facilities.

It was 14 months after the project commenced, that this period of the project was reached, and already the Chinese company that controls East Arm and Stokes Hill, was questioning the need for yet another wharf for mining industry, with the BOC Helium and Inpex Gas wharfs located close by. The rail line extension had been completed just five months earlier, with two sidings for storage of railcars, that are not in use, plus a Rail maintenance shed was also constructed.

The 30-metre wide wharf consists of land fill for a distance of 1.5 kilometres, with bluestone rock seawalls, and reinforced concrete mooring walls, that are 600 metres long, to accommodate any size ship, including RORO and Container ships, and this is wharf storage facilities that covers an area of 24 acres, that includes 4 giant sheds, to protect anything sensitive to bad weather.

The ship that is delivering the Harbour city, will be the first ship to moor at the new wharf, even thou the construction work is not quite completed, and it will also bring with it, 4 brand-new super tug boats, capable of pushing or pulling any sized super tanker ship.

For Hamysh, although his grandson Joshua, and his close friend Kipling had declined being involved in this new project, as they are busy enough as it is with Ocean City, he travelled to Darwin from his home on Wake Island, to see the arrival of the Harbour City, along with his business colleagues, Sebastian Wagner, his husband Sir Lewis, and his twin brothers, Louis & Joachim and their cousin Xander, plus Lord Tyler Finch, the Earl of Portland.

The consortium, asked that the 12 operations staff that had been employed by the NT Government, to meet at 5 pm on a Friday evening, for a briefing on the new facilities, and this was held at the Darwin Convention Centre, where access would be restricted to just those attending, and a minimum number of permanent Convention centre staff.

When making the booking, Hamysh had insisted that all convention centre staff who will be on duty at the time of their meeting, are to have been directly employed by the convention centre for more than twelve months, so that no temporary staff were permitted to gain access to an information sensitive meeting.

Hamysh had also insisted that all twelve staff that have been employed by the NT government have gone through a strict security screening, with a detailed family history check, to ensure that security is maintained at the highest level for the facilities.

When the Wagner family, Hamysh Lloyd and Lord Tyler met that afternoon for a business lunch, to go through the plans for the evenings information meeting, they met in the resort hotels meeting room, where they would discuss, the plans for the next few days of events, which would kick off with the arrival of the Harbour city, with the ship due to arrive at approximately 7 pm that evening.

With it being Friday evening, all work on the wharf had been stopped until Monday morning, and the access gates had been locked to stop any unauthorised entry during the Harbour city being put together. Its location had been carefully chosen, with the bottom of the city resting on the bottom of a shallow area just north of the point, where, at high tide, the roof of level four, the lowest level of the complex is only half a metre above the water level.

With poles rammed into the ground underwater, the city would be able to float so it will raise and fall with the tides, and will only rest on the floor of the harbour at very low tide, and the height of the top level above ground level, will depend on the tides.

At the meeting, it didn’t take long for the twins to notice that their young cousin was regularly looking at Lord Tyler as carefully as possible without being noticed. When the twins chuckled at this, after carefully watching for a few minutes, Sebastian stopped talking and frowned at his brothers.

In Italian, Louis and Joachim informed their brother that their young cousin has appeared to have a keen interest in the youngest member of the consortium. Sebastian looked at Xander who of course understood everything that the twins said, and he blushed bright red, which made the twins laugh out loud.

“I am sorry for my brothers, rudeness in speaking in Italian, it is just a family issue, that will be discuss at a later time,” Sebastian explained, as he frowned at his brothers, and Xander who was sitting next to Sebastian, just kept his head down and squirmed in his seat. Sir Lewis, who had only picked up about half of the words said in Italian, managed to get a good idea of what was said, and with Xander blushing he understood the rest.

As the meeting came to a close, it was suggested by Sebastian that we all remain in the hotel grounds, so nothing unexpected happens to anyone within the consortium. As Hamysh had explained during the meeting, there is accommodation for the consortium on Harbour City, which has restricted access, and with security cards, with four levels of access made up for the complex, only the consortium would have the red access cards, which gives access to all areas.

The six executive staff will have the next level down, which is the blue access cards, the operations staff will have green access cards and general staff will have the yellow access cards. The executive staff will be the only ones who will be made aware of the red access cards, and off a restricted accommodation area on the city.

An earlier cargo ship that arrived two days earlier, had delivered the four super tug boats, along with two swath catamaran boats, like the ones used by ocean city, instead of them coming with the Harbour city as originally planned, and they are currently being stored at a large shed facility located at Francis Bay, just north of the fishermen’s mooring basin, on the eastern edge of the city.

The 50-metre wide and 200-metre long block of land, that the consortium had bought, has harbour frontage, and the shed sits on the harbour end of the block, covering the full width of the block, and a half of its length, with a 60-metre long and 24-metre wide trench running through the middle of the shed, that has reinforced concrete walls and mooring bollards along it, to moor the swath boats on one side and tug boats on the other.

This shed is to be the transport terminal for the harbour city, with a security system installed that allows only authorised people into the building, with three doors to pass through before entering the waiting lounge at the back of the building, that provides tea, coffee and snacks facilities, as well as toilets comfortable lounge chairs and seating areas around a number of small tables.

The building is not marked with any signage to identify it with any company at all, and a security gate requires the staff access card to allow vehicles to enter the property and park in the covered carpark, at the front of the shed, and this is where the staff will be directed to come on Monday morning.

The twins were assigned the job of checking Identification from each of the operations staff that are attending this meeting at the resort hotel, and once everyone had arrived, the four senior members of the consortium entered the room and walked to the front of the room.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please find a seat so we may begin this meeting,” Sebastian called out to everyone present.

“Good evening and thank you for coming, now just a brief introduction about the four of us here at the front, my name is Sebastian Wagner, I am the head of Wagner International Investments, and beside me is my husband Sir Lewis Shaw, who most of you would have seen in the media over the past decade, in regards to his work as the first Administrator of the Indian Ocean Territories of Australia.

The other two are Mr Hamysh Lloyd, of Lloyd Family Corporation, who you may know as the owners of the famous giant research submarines, Aquaria and Oceania, and his base on Wake Island in the Pacific, and finally a young man who has received unwanted media attention, in particular in the UK, his Lordship, the Earl of Portland, Lord Tyler Finch, who is a Western Australian born and educated young man, who is equally determined to make this project as a success as I do.

Together we are the Northport Consortium, and we have financed and are building a new multi-use wharf at the south end of Darwin Harbour at Wickham Point, to overcome the huge mistake made a few years back with the long-term lease of the port facilities to a Chinese company.

You have been employed as the operations team that will manage this new port facility along with a new Darwin Harbour traffic control centre, that includes a meteorology centre, customs and quarantine centre, and tugboat management within the harbour.

In other words, we are taking back control of the management of the harbour itself, while the Chinese company will continue to run its own operations at Stokes Hill and East Arm. The following people will be the executive team that will manage everything, and they are the harbour master and deputy master, the tug master, the senior meteorologist, and deputy meteorologist, and the chief engineer, who is in charge of keeping the harbour control centre operational everyday 24/7.

The other senior staff present today are the Senior Border Control officer, that deals with customs and quarantine matters, one weather station staff, two harbour controllers, the executive chef, who will keep you all fed, and the security chief. You will all have accommodation available to you while you are rostered on duty or on call.

An additional 20 staff yet to be employed, will also live at the complex, which also has sports and recreation facilities, to keep you fit and entertained, and a further 14 general staff will work at the complex only during the day, and will be ferried back to Darwin each day,” Sebastian announced before sitting down.