Sidney in Australia is bounded by a series of bays located at different points of the mouth of the Parramatta River, from which the city has developed urbanistically. The last one was known as Homebush Bay.
A large-scale urban development located west of Sidney and whose area was the subject of a plan that coincided with the celebration of the Olympic Games. And that served to recover the section of the waterway that presented high levels of contamination, due to uncontrolled spills resulting from industrial activity and deposits of rust generated by the corrosion of dozens of ships deposited on its banks resulted in the prohibition of all fishing activity.
Although practically all the ships were removed, there are still some relics of the past, which testify that for almost half a century this area was the destination where numerous boats and ships from the most diverse activities, commercial, fishing, military... were abandoned.
THE SS AYRFIELD IS ONE OF THE FAVORITE CHALLENGES FOR URBEX LOVERS.
The best known is undoubtedly the SS Ayrfield, one of the many ships retired from service and whose peculiarity consists in the fact that due to the passage of time, apart from the deterioration of its oxidized hull, its deck has been replaced by a new one. Its deck has been replaced by a floating forest dominated by a variety of arboreal species.
Parasitacion of vegetation that has become the ideal place for nesting, a variety of birds although it should be noted that the most abundant are the gulls and cormorants. Especially in the breeding season they come to the area because they consider it a safe place, as it is protected from their natural predators.
Anchored a few meters from the shore, the spectral silhouette of such a unique boat has received the name of The Floating Forest. It modifies the landscape of the area by redrawing its profile, having become an ecosystem populated by numerous species, composed of insects and small amphibians as well as different plant species, confusing its presence with that of a nearby islet.
READ IT IN SPANISH: SS Ayrfield, el barco convertido en bosque abandonado en la bahía de Sidney
Built and launched in 1911 in the United Kingdom, from where she departed on a long voyage to Sidney. The SS Ayrfield began its trajectory as a steamship destined to cover different routes transporting travelers and provisions, between the towns that decades later would be added as districts of an emerging metropolis.
It served as a gateway for hundreds of thousands of settlers, who arrived on its unpopulated shores, with the expectation and hope of offering a future that they could leave as an inheritance to successive generations of citizens. Whose presence and work have been decisive for this vast expanse of territory known as Australia, has become what we know today, one of the most advanced and developed countries in the world.
As early as the 1940s, the military authorities considered her spacious holds to be ideal for transporting supplies to meet the supply needs of the army infantry units serving in the Pacific region during the Second World War.
After the war, the ship went on to serve as a coal carrier between Newcastle and Miller's terminal in Blackwattle Bay. Finally, in 1972, she was decommissioned and sent to the Homebush Bay maritime graveyard, where she was partially scrapped.
Since then she has lain on a slightly overturned sandbank attracting the attention of more and more curious onlookers attracted by the display of lush vegetation that has turned her into a postcard, having been photographed thousands of times.
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