The pre-industrial experiment actually uses the file from /g/data/access/payu/access-esm/restart/pre-industrial/atmosphere/restart_dump.astart and confusingly ignores /g/data/access/payu/access-esm/input/pre-industrial/start_dump/pre-industrial.astart. It crashes almost immediately.
I’ve got a test version in GitHub - MartinDix/access-esm at pre-industrial that uses the year 101 restart files from PI-02 and reproduces PI-02 exactly. In the process of moving all the inputs to the vk83 project.