a "National Heritage Place"
www.cerberus.com.au
Cerberus Newsletter No. 201
18 July 2018

Permit to Approve Filling Cerberus with Concrete Approved

This a brief newsletter to advise our supporters that the Executive Officer of Heritage Victoria, Steven Avery, has approved the permit application by the City of Bayside to fill Cerberus with 4,000 tonnes of Concrete. One has to wonder whether Heritage Victoria is considering changing their name to Vandalism Victoria but there is no indication of this yet. Our committee is meeting tonight and there will be another newsletter on Thursday or Friday.

Permit Details

Heritage Victoria's Questions and Answers

From Heritage Victoria's Questions and Answers. What other options were considered? Options considered by the applicant included the use of cement stabilised sand, epoxy grout and polyurethane foam instead of concrete The City of Bayside undertook thorough investigations into the use of a polyurethane foam as proposed in many of the submissions. This option was not supported based on cost, environmental risk, and that polyurethane foam has not previously been tested on ship wrecks or similar contexts. Further the use of polyurethane foam would not adequately address public safety concerns or prevent the collapse of the wreck.

Notes re above points

1. It is true that the use of polyurethane would not address Bayside's public liability concerns. After all it is a heritage grant. Safety concerns could easily be addressed but have not been as this does not appear to have been a concern for Bayside untl recently. We are not aware of Bayside having done anything to limit access to Cerberus during the last two decades. Steel mesh over access points was installed last century.
   
   
2. It is true that polyurethane has not been used in shipwrecks but our objection pointed out examples of its use in marine environments, including in vessels, from the 1960s up to this year.
   
   
3. We are surprised by the claim that the City of Bayside thoroughly investigated the use of polyurethane, as their Archeologist had not received our information on polyuretane that we sent a month prior to my meeting him, or even seemed to be aware of this option. This was just six days prior to the concrete solution being presented to Bayside Council.
   
   
4. The safety data sheet for polyurethane points our that "Cured material is environmentally safe.".
   
   
5. An indicative quote indicates that the cost is within the existing budget, which cannot be said for the concrete approach.
   
   
6. Polyurethane injected under the turrets would prevent their collapse which has been determined as the main risk to Cerberus. It is a collapse of the turrets that would be most likely to cause the entire ship to collapse. As very little, if any, concrete is likely to find its way under the gun turrets, these would not be supported and would therefore be more likely to collapse if the concrete approach was used.

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What can Supporters Do?

At this stage we suggest that supporters might like to write polite letters to the editors of The Sun, The Age, The Australian and The Bayside Leader newspapers pointing out the stupidity of concrete fill as opposed to the use of polyurethane. We cannot emphasise enough, that until over 200 concrete trucks are driving towards Half Moon Bay, the battle is not lost.

We believe that for letters to be considered for publication, they must have a name, street address and phone number so their authenticity can be checked. An email address is not sufficient.

Letters to The Age Newspaper

Letters to The Sun Newspaper

Letters to The Australian Newspaper

Letters to The Bayside Leader

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Our Case that was Rejected by Heritage Victoria

Friends of Cerberus Submission

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John Rogers
Fleet Engineer (Victorian Navy)
website, research & Friends of the Cerberus President.

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