Phillip Island’s early ship building industry was based at Newhaven, and according to Joshua Gliddon, in “Phillip Island in Picture and Story” some of Australia’s most interesting ships were built here in the early 1900s.

“Among these, several are a result of the industry of W H Crole, at Newhaven,” Mr Gliddon wrote.
“His was an interesting case in which the hobby of a boy became the business of a man.”

Woody Point was the early name for Newhaven which we know through old photos was heavily wooded prior to settlement; and was the island’s main fishing centre.

JW Gliddon suggests it probably got its name from a town on the coast of Sussex in England.

On a very old map, dated 1842, a spot near the road at the end of the bridge is marked Parish’s Hut. It is believed to have been used by sealers and perhaps later by wattle strippers.

Walter Harry Crole (known as Harry) moved to Newhaven around 1918 and began fishing boat construction, which among other things, led to his being the first local family to fish for shark in Bass Strait

Newhaven had changed very little in the eighty years preceding 1918, the year in which Harry Crole arrived there.
Only three houses had been built at that stage.

The following 30 years saw over seventy new homes built, housing 350 people, and fifty fishermen occupied in sailing the local fleet of 20 boats, which ranged in size from 25 to 75 feet.

The biggest of these ships sailed to the Tasmanian coast and engaged in trawling, long line fishing, shark fishing, the catching of flathead and teriki, and in some cases ocean netting.

Smaller boats netted in the estuaries for whiting, flounder, pike, trout, mullet and other fish.