Today marks the end of an era for one of our longest running vessels, MV Stradbroke Venture.
Over the past 36 years MV Stradbroke Venture has ensured many families and businesses were able to move between Redland Bay and the Bay Islands.
Venture will be heading from our Redland Bay service to Yamba to undergo major works to breathe new life into her and offer our business and customers additional redundancy and service reliability if needed in future as we await the arrival of the brand-new vessels SeaLink has under construction for the Redland Bay service.
Did you know Venture was purchased from Riverside Coal in 1987? Originally the vessel operated from Cleveland to the Bay Islands for 6 months while the stern loader was being erected at Redland Bay. Venture originally had a top deck (pictured below), but this was removed many years ago.
It is a bittersweet feeling sending the vessel away but now it is time for her to go on a new ad-Venture. This is not necessarily a goodbye, so instead we will just say ‘thanks for the many memories’.