Norman Wright, was one of the true doyens of the Australian Wooden boatbuilding industry. He is arguably the greatest mentor of classic wooden boat builders in our history.

Norman R Wright was born in 1885 in rather unremarkable circumstances in the isolated suburb of Bulimba, adjacent to the shores of the Brisbane River in Queensland Australia.  

The Bulimba Electorate was created in 1872 and in 1879 the Bulimba Divisional Board was created as the local government authority for the area from Tingalpa Creek to Stone's Corner. Most of the housing subdivisions in this area took place during the land boom of the 1880s. Bulimba, Bulimba Bridge, Circular Quay, Bulimba Ferry, and the Love and Jamieson Paddock Estates were all developed in central Bulimba during this period. The building boom resulted in a great increase in the number of developments and residents in Bulimba.

In 1888, Bulimba was described as 'a small township about four miles distant from the City of Brisbane.
 

Norman R Wright, in 1950, ably assisted by young Mervyn James Hazell aboard Sirius ll, before the Sydney Gladstone Yacht Race. 

In the earliest days, Bulimba was a popular camping ground for the Aborigines. Corroborees and camps there were common. The Aborigines called Bulimba 'Tugulawa', which meant 'heart', probably a reference to the heart-shaped piece of land that forms the peninsula of Bulimba.

Ollie Crouch; the son of George Crouch, who had settled in Bulimba in 1865; remembers: 'there used to be a camp down Brisbane Street. One-eyed Jacky was the Chieftain'. Corroborees were held at the site of the present graving dock in Morningside. Other campsites may have been at the lower ends of Riding Road and Brisbane Street.

This was the early Bulimba that Norman R Wright grew up in.  

Norman Wright, his history and his boats. 

Normans Father, Henry William Wright, worked as a Customs Officer for the Australian Government and Norman, unlike many of the millionaire industrialists building boats at the turn of the century in North America and Europe, was unencumbered by either a formal education or family wealth.

Nonetheless, despite this perceived handicap, Norman would go on to establish himself as one of the world’s most iconic boat builders of the twentieth century. 

The Wright family was one of the original founding families in Bulimba and in fact one of the earliest settlers to the Brisbane area. 

Norman began work at age ten as a cook and companion to a visiting journalist from the U.K. Upon the writers return to England, Norman attended school, but his attendance was sporadic at best and instead, he would often accompany his Father on trips to Coochiemudlo Island in the bay islands where they owned a pig farm.

By age Fifteen, Norman had sensed an impending failure of his Fathers pig farming venture and went to work in the paint shop at Sachs & Company in Brisbane.

Not long after, Normans Father caught a chill and subsequently died of pneumonia, leaving the teenaged Norman as the primary provider for the family.

Following the death of his Father, Norman worked with his brother Alfred, who was employed at Laycock-Littledykes as a joiner. With a combination of inexperience and exuberance, Norman was involved in a workplace accident that left him unable to work with three split fingers, resulting from a clash with a spindle moulding machine.

During his convalescence, Norman spent much of his time visiting the boat shed down the street owned by John Hawkins Whereat. 

The staff at the original Norman R Wright Newstead boat yard. From the left, Ted Jackman, James Hogan Smith, Percy Tripcony, Gilbert Lumsden, Morris Brooks, Norman R Wright, Blucher, "the yard dog', Frank Gould, Jack McLeer and Charles Crowley in the loft. 

At the time, the yard contained a somewhat infamous 22’ sailboat named the “Bulletin” that had won an interstate race to Sydney in the late 1890’s. Normans interest in the boat alongside his fascination with how boats were built, prompted Jack Whereat to offer young Norman a job once his hand had healed.