Webb Dock

Webb Dock is a container shipping port facility at Fishermans Bend in Melbourne, Victoria constructed progressively from 1960, by dredging and land fill at the mouth of the Yarra River. It includes roll-on/roll-off and container facilities handling motor vehicle import and export and break bulk commodities.

Shipping in Melbourne was initially accommodated at wharves on the Yarra River downstream of Queen Street, and for ships of deeper draught, at anchorages in Port Phillip Bay. The Melbourne Harbour Trust acted on plans that had been developed in the immediate post war period, to construct a new dock at the mouth of the Yarra, which would reduce the turn-around time for shipping by avoiding the difficult route up to the river wharves. The shore at the head of Port Phillip Bay once accommodated fishermen's shacks, the last of which was demolished in the 1970s to expand the dock.

No.1 "roll‐on roll‐off" berth was completed and opened in 1959 with a road ramp and land area for the Princess of Tasmania passenger and vehicle ferry service. This was the first berth of its type in Australia. No 2 berth was completed in 1961 to accommodate the roll‐on roll‐off cargo vessel Bass Trader. No 3 berth was built between 1967 and 1969, while No 4 Berth was opened in 1975, and No 5 in 1982. The dock is named after John Percival Webb OBE, a former Melbourne Harbor Trust commissioner.

The Webb Dock railway line and a rail terminal north of the dock were constructed in 1984-86 to link the dock with the West Melbourne rail yards but decommissioned in 1992 due to its impractically sharp bends and to enable the development of Docklands. The Yarra River crossing on the rail link was reused as a pedestrian bridge as part of Docklands precinct. The Princess of Tasmania used Webb dock from about 1959.

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