The iconic Fairfield Boathouse, sitting on the Northcote side of the Yarra River beside the Pipe Bridge, has been an icon of the Yarra River for 166 years.

It was established in 1908 by John St Clair, a piano tuner from Smith Street Fitzroy, as a boatshed and refreshment room.

Getting permission to build it wasn’t a simple process. John St Clair wrote a letter to the Victorian Premier suggesting that he open a refreshment room and boat shed area, with motorboats at Fairfield Park.

The Premier sought and won approval from Yarra Bend Asylum as the proposal for the boat shed was on the hospital grounds. With approval granted, Mr St Clair built Fairfield Park Boat House, later known as “Willow Dell”.

As the Encyclopedia of Melbourne notes: “Fairfield Park Boathouse Boathouses were popular centres for boating, canoeing, swimming, picnics and carnivals until the 1950s. Their popularity declined as motor cars and television offered new opportunities for leisure, and as increased pollution made swimming unattractive.”

But Mr St Clair had seven troubled years with Crown Bailiffs over building permits. Eventually in 1915 the boathouse was acquired by Heidelberg Council in 1915, after Fairfield Park had been separated from the hospital grounds.

Boat and canoe carnivals and open-air carnivals were common sights at Fairfield until the 1950s when the introduction of cars meant people could travel further out of the city for their recreation.

As the popularity of hiring boats on the Yarra declined in 1980 the Fairfield boathouse was closed as it was declared unfit for human habitation.

In 1985 Paul Van Der Sluys, whose parents ran the Studley Park and now demolished Rudder Grange boathouses, won the tender through the Northcote council to restore the boathouse. The derelict building had recently housed squatters and possums.

The Van Der Sluys family had a long and deep association with boat sheds. Paul’s parents ran Rudder Grange Boat Shed and then the nearby Studley Park Boathouse where Paul grew up.

As a young boy Paul helped his mother hire out the boats and remembers his mother rowing down the river to retrieve boats which had been washed away.

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne notes:

“Paul and his wife Jill reopened the boathouse in 1985, with a new fleet of hire boats modelled on those used on London’s Thames in the mid-19th century. The site is now leased from Yarra City.”

Like all the boathouses along the river, The Fairfield Boathouse was flooded regularly in its early decades. In 1923 the boathouse was raised by 12 feet to help minimise flood damage, a frequent threat to boathouses along the Yarra.

In 1985 the boat shed was rebuilt and opened up by Paul Van Der Sluy after 30,000 hours of meticulous restoration work.

Today it stands overlooking the river as a much-loved Melbourne icon.