Docklands: Firelight returns, and the harbour takes centre stage

Melbourne is into the coldest stretch of the year, which is precisely when Docklands does its best work – turning Victoria Harbour into a stage.

Firelight Festival returns to Harbour Esplanade from Friday, July 3 to Sunday, July 5: three nights of fire, light, music and food, timed for exactly the moment the precinct needs a lift.

Even with the reduced wharfside it’s billed as the biggest edition yet, as every edition dutifully is. More than 130 performers and fire artists will take over the Esplanade, and a new laser-and-water spectacle will be choreographed against 20 fountains, lighting the water itself. The City of Melbourne expects well over 100,000 visitors across the weekend – a figure it arrives at with its customary optimism, and one we’d be delighted to see proved conservative.

For us at MMHN, the most interesting part was never the promenade – it was the water. Last year, Firelight’s “Light the Night” boat display invited local owners to dress their vessels and cruise the harbour after dark, with the crowd voting a People’s Choice. The debut drew just five illuminated boats, but by every account they were a hit with the crowds lining the Esplanade. Which makes its quiet disappearance from this year’s programme a real missed opportunity.

Because a harbour full of lit vessels isn’t a novelty, it’s a memory. Victoria Harbour spent the better part of a century as a working waterfront, and few things honour that past better than boats alive on the water after dark. So, consider this an early plea to the organisers: bring Light the Night back next year, bigger and brighter, and use it to coax the much-missed heritage fleet back onto the harbour for a proper lap of honour. What finer farewell to the working harbour that made them?

Meanwhile, one storied vessel has settled in to take up the slack. The MV Steve Irwin, the former Sea Shepherd flagship of Whale Wars fame, is now berthed at Melbourne City Marina in Docklands. Saved from the scrapyard by the not-for-profit Ship4Good, the “Steve” carries genuine credentials: she’s a registered historic vessel, and after a decade of Antarctic campaigning has found a quieter second life in education and ocean conservation.

Ship4Good is running “General Waste’s Kids Shipboard Tour & Treasure Hunt” aboard the Steve Irwin across the school holidays, a ship-wide hunt led by the vessel’s performers and educators (cast as the villainous General Waste), with clues, eco-challenges and a serious point about marine debris wrapped inside the fun. It’s aimed at children aged 7 to 13 and their families, runs 11am to 12 .30pm, and has sessions on June 28 and July 3, 4, 7 and 11. Bookings here.

It’s just the sort of thing MMHN likes to see – a historic ship earning her keep by drawing a new generation onto the water.

A few other dates for the diary. Melbourne Rare Book Week runs July 23 to August 1, with a full programme including a session from our own Liz Rushen. 

And if Firelight tempts you back out into the cold, make a day of it: MMHN’s own Maritime Heritage Trails walk you through Melbourne’s waterfront past in three illustrated chapters – Victoria Harbour, Northbank and Southbank, all available on your phone, and providing a new perspective on some very old water.

On a sadder note, MMHN marks the passing of Geoff Dougall, respected Williamstown historian, founder of the Williamstown Maritime Association, and one of the early site managers whose vision helped shape Seaworks – the precinct now preparing to welcome Victoria’s heritage fleet. Geoff passed away on June 12, aged 80. Vale. •