One hundred years on Tasman Terrace
Before Driftwood Hall dealt its first hand, this Tasman Terrace building spent sixty years supplying the Boston Bay tuna fleet with rope, canvas, paint and hardware.
Sixty years of rope, fifty years of cards
The building went up in the 1920s, a plain timber shed built to keep line, canvas and paint dry for boats working Boston Bay's tuna grounds.
When the chandlery finally closed, Port Lincoln lost a piece of its working waterfront — Driftwood Hall opened two years later to give the building a new trade.
Locals still call it “the chandlery” as often as they call it Driftwood Hall, and the name on the awning hasn't changed since 1974.
1920s
the shed was built for ship supplies
New trade
cards replaced canvas and rope on the shelves
Same walls
timber and tin, unchanged since the chandlery days
What hasn't changed since 1974
The floor plan is the one the chandlery left behind: a long open hall for stock, a smaller side room for paperwork. Ours just holds cards where theirs held rope.
A few regulars remember the place before the change of trade — they still point out where the counter used to stand before it became our tea and coffee counter.
What hasn't shifted is the pace of the room: quiet concentration at the tables, a house dealer keeping count, nothing rushed and nothing online.
One floor plan
the chandlery's layout, largely unaltered
Old-timers
a handful of regulars remember the building's first trade
Same pace
quiet, unhurried, in person, exactly as it always was