Breakwater stands the test of time despite storm damage

But despite questions over its viability and construction, there is no doubt the Warrnambool icon has stood the test of time over the past 130 years.

It may have been built to protect the visiting ships, many of which came to grief in Lady Bay, but it is as much a tourism drawcard today as it was when it was first built.

"The breakwater is itself decidedly a thing of beauty," wrote a journalist in The Leader newspaper in 1890 as construction was nearing completion. But calls were being made for it to be extended.

Those extensions finally came decades later as the country was about to be plunged into a world war - but large cracks in the structure soon appeared which led to a Royal Commission that lasted weeks.

The breakwater is such a part of Warrnambool's identity, that it's hard to image the city without it but it very nearly didn't happen.

Builder and keen fisherman Neville Dance, who is also on the council's harbour reference group, said he had always had a "soft spot" for the breakwater which is an icon for the city.

It was so much a part of Warrnambool that the city couldn't afford to lose it, he said.

The breakwater suffered extensive damage during massive swells in April leading to its closure. Just how badly damaged, and how much it will cost to repair, is yet to be fully determined.

"Without the breakwater, what they are doing with the boat ramp and jetties, if that breakwater goes, that's the end of the whole show. That's the end of the fishing fleet, the tourists, everything," Mr Dance said.

"I don't know how many years are left in it. It can't survive forever, because the last bit of its actually sitting on sand, not reef."

Mr Dance said he'd been fascinated by the history of the breakwater and to build something like the breakwater today would still be a "fairly mammoth task".

The first attempt to build a breakwater wall in the 1870s was heralded with much fanfare, but it was abandoned before it really got started.

In the mid-1800s, at least three steamers were calling into Warrnambool's harbour weekly and it was becoming a busy port for trade. But Lady Bay was a dangerous place for anchoring ships, and the leaders began lobbying for a breakwater.

Work on the first "pell-mell" breakwater began in 1876 - a 500-metre-long structure that was about two metres above the water.

It was to form off an artificial reef using blocks of rubble masonry weighing up to 20 tonnes, but the project was criticised as just money being "pitched into the sea".

The day the first foundation stone was to be laid was declared a holiday in Warrnambool, according to an article written for the Warrnambool and District Historical Society by Ian Symons.

"A procession of residents, children from the state school, and members of friendly societies, started from the town hall shortly after 11am and proceeded to the new jetty," he wrote.

The Premier of the day, Sir James McCulloch, along with the minister for public works Joseph Jones and councillors joined in the march.

As the crowds cheered and the band played, a bottle of champagne was broken over the first block to be tipped into the ocean from a pontoon.

Despite the fanfare, by the end of the following year there had been a change of government, and work ground to a halt.

But the town had set its heart on a breakwater and by 1878, Sir John Coode was brought in to advise on the best way to protect Warrnambool's harbour and the ships that used its jetties.

As imposing as it stands today, the original plans for the breakwater were far more ambitious. But to keep costs down, plans for a 550-metre-long wall were scaled back to 270 metres. It was no surprise that when construction was almost complete in 1890 there was already pressure to extend it.

"The breakwater is an engineering achievement of a high order. The only complaint now is that it is not long enough," The Leader reported. The argument was that so much had already been spent that it would be "folly" not to complete the project.

The project hadn't been without its troubles. The Edinburugh Castle that was carrying barrels of concrete from London for the construction came to grief in the bay in 1888 leaving barrels of concrete on the ocean floor near the mouth of the Hopkins River.

Costs had also soared and the project reportedly had a bad name in some quarters and had been dubbed the "political breakwater" with The Leader reporting that the whole scheme was characterised as "a piece of ever recurring parliamentary jobbery".

The breakwater wasn't the only plan for Warrnambool's growing shipping trade. There were those in the late 1800s that wanted to dredge the then swampy lagoon of Lake Pertobe and turned it into docks which would be protected by the new breakwater.

But despite the troubles that plagued the breakwater, from the moment it was completed it was clearly more than a workplace. "As seen from the heights that overlook the bay, there is no fairer view in Victoria than that presented by Warrnambool harbour," The Leader reported.

By 1913, the calls to extend the breakwater were heard and work began on another 90 metres of wall, but according to the Victorian Heritage database it was "a failure and the new structure soon began to subside".

A Royal Commission was called to probe the project in 1923. Historian, Warrnambool's Alan Tampion, bought one of the original Royal Commission reports at auction over a decade ago. "I've read it a number of times," he said. "The judge at the end says a sufficiently deep foundation was not provided," he said

Warrnambool Coast Guard's Steve Tippett, a former police officer who is also on the council's harbour reference group, said no criminality was found by the commission.

It was more of a "she'll be right" attitude, he said "but it wasn't". The findings, he said, were "a combination of things they should have done better". When the breakwater was completed in 1890, newspapers predicted a bright future for Warrnambool. But Mr Dance said the thing that sealed the fate of Warrnambool being a harbour was the arrival of the railway line.

"The same person who was instrumental in building the breakwater also went on to be instrumental in building the railway line to Melbourne which took the livelihood away from the harbour," he said. By the 1940s the harbour was no longer used.

Warrnambool's Tammy Good has had a long family connection to the breakwater, her grandfather Robert Good worked the ships at the breakwater unloading coal.

She grew up looking at a framed family photo from the 1920s of her grandfather unloading a coal ship while her grandmother and auntie and uncle look on.

Arthur Dobson, the engineer principally responsible for the breakwater, said he considered the breakwater the greatest work of his life.