“I’VE always taken the hardest job I can because I like to be challenged.”

“I like a challenge, it keeps me alive.”

So says Jim Quinlivan, and judging by his record, it’s hard to argue with the Portland carpenter.

Mr Quinlivan has been behind some of the key restorations in the city in the past 30 years, from the Portland lifeboat to the Mac’s Hotel to Windjammers and the drill hall, he has been a key part of them all.

For the past 13 years, his focus has been on the Steam Packet Inn, the 182-year-old building on Bentinck St opposite the library.

It has been restored from the ground up – literally, as it was leaning over when Mr Quinlivan started – as he pursued a dream of turning it into an accommodation venue that overseas visitors could feel at home in.

Now, as he looks to move on to other adventures in his life, Mr Quinlivan hopes someone with the passion he might have had if he was 15 years younger might take the venerable old building into the next stage of its history.

A passion is born

But before diving into the Steam Packet Inn, it’s probably instructional to dive into the background of its owner.

Mr Quinlivan comes from a longstanding local family and trained as a carpenter, but like countless other young people, decide to have a look at where the grass seemed greener.

That led him to Melbourne, where he worked on historic buildings in the inner city.

In 1976 he headed overseas and worked in London and Zermatt in the Swiss Alps, near the famous Matterhorn.

He then travelled around for a couple of years, including to Afghanistan – a country he still retains a passion for – and he also spent time on an Israeli kibbutz, a popular activity with young travellers in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Then I came back (to Portland) when my father died, with $50 in my pocket,” Mr Quinlivan said.

He bought 15 acres, with the aim of living a self-sufficient lifestyle, and by the time he was 24 had planted plenty of trees, started building a house, got married and was a father.

In 1987 the family then travelled in around Australia on a two-year trip, with seven months spent in Fremantle, where Mr Quinlivan learned the skills of boat building and worked on the America’s Cup yachts there as Australia defended the time-honoured trophy won four years earlier.

From there the family headed north to the Aboriginal settlement then known as Turkey Creek (now Warmun) where Mr Quinlivan built houses and then Darwin where he made furniture.

Then he was back home to finish off the house and he became boat carpenter.

“I did up all the boats in Portland, there were 35 crayfishing boats and I did the odd yacht as well,” Mr Quinlivan said.

“When I realised I wasn’t going to get my own yacht, because my wife didn’t want to come out to sea with me, I went and did other things.”

However, in the early 1990s he worked on the now heritage-listed lifeboat Portland then restored the Mac’s Hotel with David Fredericks, then the likes of Windjammers and the drill hall.

That last job finished about 2009-10 and after his wife passed away in 2010, Mr Quinlivan headed to the north of Spain, where he walked the Camino trail.

Mr Quinlivan also got the idea for his next project – the renovation of the Steam Packet Inn.

Let the restoration begin

“I wanted this to be a world-class tavern that would be a place that overseas travellers would come,” he said.

“To have the passion to do it you’ve got to end up living the idea of what the building represented in the past.

“That was that it was a meeting place where people could get together, exchanging ideas and becoming friends.”

He had bought the building from Glenelg Shire Council, though not for the rumoured price about town of $1.

“That was the price for the National Trust, not a private buyer,” Mr Quinlivan said.

“They were running it for $1 a year.

“It has also cost a lot more than that in time, effort and money to get it to where it is today.

“Some people have said to me ‘you’re doing it for the money’ but I can assure you I can make a lot more money doing something else.

“I’m only disappointed that I didn’t get to use the furniture that was in there at the time.

“The thing about this building is that it is back to its original condition.”

And that has been endorsed by descendants of past inhabitants – the family of original owner Samuel Hutchinson and the Roche family, who bought it in 1938, who have all admired a restoration designed to bring the building back to what it was like when it was bought.

“They’ve loved what I’ve done and they’re happy with the workmanship,” Mr Quinlivan said.

“And they’re so happy it’s been given another life.

“It was going to fall down when I bought it, it was leaning over and the whole project hinged on me, in the prime of my life, being able to do a project like this.

“You have to be patient to do it – I make mistakes like everybody, and you’ve got to fix them.

“It is what it is – workmanship – and that’s what the whole place is.

“This has been the climax of my journey as a tradesman.”

That even includes making his own roof tiles – to do so Mr Quinlivan made a press first, a job that took many years, and it sits on the property.

The restoration included sourcing and saving authentic timbers, reusing and re-purposing when possible, while also incorporating some modern comforts

“It is a warm and cozy home, oozing with character and memorabilia from a lifetime of collecting both in Australia and overseas,” Mr Quinlivan said.

A little bit of history

The Steam Packet Inn is one of the – if not the – oldest surviving timber buildings in Victoria, built between 1841 and 1842 with timber and other materials imported from Tasmania and transported on the schooners Dusty Miller and Minerva.

 It is believed to have been built by Tasmanian Robert Herbertson for Mr Hutchinson, who bought the half-acre (0.2ha) site as part of the first Crown land sale at Portland Bay on October 17, 1840.

Mr Hutchinson and his wife Catherine, were both convicted pickpockets and he was sentenced to transportation for life in 1821, arriving in Van Diemen’s Land on Boxing Day of that year.

Receiving a pardon in 1838, he married and travelled from Launceston to Melbourne to attend that Portland land sale, paying 214 pounds for the block.

The Inn was opened for business in July 1842 and over the period of Mr Hutchinson’s ownership (he owned it until his death in 1874) it was used variously as a hotel, guest house, temperance hotel and even police barracks – the latter from when the government rented it from him in 1860.

In 1865 it became a private residence and when Mr Hutchinson died the ownership went to his second wife and six children.

The Roche family bought it in 1938 and during their ownership it was a boarding house and residence until purchased by the-then Portland Town Council in 1974 – the National Trust leased it in 1983 until its sale 20 years later.

Mr Quinlivan and Deb Jones have worked on the property together in recent years – Ms Jones, originally from Wales, arrived in Portland in 1985 and became a National Trust member in her early 20s, the Steam Packet Inn being the meeting place for members here.

“I joined the committee and enjoyed volunteering to run the shop and show people around the property,” she said.