Calmer Waters

 

...Felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she'd break;

Wondered every time she raced if she'd stand the shock;

Heard the seas like drunken men pounding at her strake;

Hoped the Lord 'ud keep his thumb on the plummer-block...

 Rudyard Kipling: The Ballad of the Bolivar 1892

The Port of Palm Beach, Florida had very little in common with Liverpool Docks or any of the Algerian ports we had recently seen, and on that April morning in 1974 it was surely a long way from the pounding we had received from the North Atlantic gale a week or so earlier during our eighteen-day crossing from Ireland to Virginia. Yet here we were at Riviera Beach, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream are closer to land than any other part of North America, and life felt pretty good.

If this is your first visit to this site, may I direct you to my earlier episodes which will provide a little more context. I suggest you start with A New Shipmate and then Rough Crossing - or even earlier if you have the time - there is an index on this this page. I hope in time you will read them all!

It had taken us a little more than a couple of days for the 750-mile journey from Newport News, down the James River and into Chesapeake Bay, dropping our pilot somewhere off Norfolk, Virginia before continuing under the impressive Chesapeake Bay Bridge and turning right into a relatively gentle Atlantic Ocean. We made our way down the coast and across the great bight between North Carolina and Florida and into the still waters surrounding Palm Beach.

There had been no time for sight-seeing or shore activities in Newport News. I had a ship's steering-gear to recondition and service among other things - and after the hammering of the last two weeks, it was important to all of us that we catch up on a little sleep.

Now it was different. We were in Florida! The weather was a balmy 27 degrees C (80 deg F), and we had a couple of days at least while cargo was loaded for our charter, and we were going to make the most of it. 

The Port of Palm Beach lies within the well protected Lake Worth Lagoon separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the barrier beaches of Singer Island. With only a few exceptions, the dock area is never the most attractive part of any city's environs, and Palm Beach was no exception. As soon as we had the opportunity, we took a cab across to the ocean-side of the lagoon and were soon acting like wealthy tourists as we baked on the beach in the Florida sunshine and later gorged ourselves on a colossal chateaubriand washed down with a fruity Saint-Émilion neither of which we could afford, but after the discomfort of the past couple of weeks, the outlay for which was swiftly justified. This is what we came to sea for!

And, for the next few months, we shared what I can only describe as some of the most enjoyable and stimulating times of my days as a seafarer. I don’t propose to present a voyage tour of all our travels during what was for us, golden days. It would possibly make interesting historical reading to my immediate family (by no means am I assured of that, by the way) but to anyone else it would be a meaningless indulgence.

Having said that, I must point out that one of the treats of a dry cargo charter (a more formal way of describing tramping) is, nautically speaking, to take the road less travelled.

We had great times in busy ports like Houston, (including an introduction to baseball at the Astrodome, drinking beer, eating hotdogs and rooting for the home team); New Orleans (memories of Pete Fountain’s Bar on Bourbon Street among many others) and not least, Trinidad at Carnival time. But it was out of the way places like Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua; Vera Cruz in Mexico; and the islands of St Lucia, St Vincent and especially, Barbados where we truly felt this ought to go on for ever.

Our Caribbean and South American experiences without a doubt caused our decided lack of interest in cruise ships many years later. The appeal of a vacation shared with a floating city of boomer superannuants and young partygoers, as tempting as the marketing may appear, is missing for us. It is not going to evoke memories of these times.

There were a couple of milestones which took place during those halcyon days.  At precisely 10 am on Sunday, 19^th May 1974 (which not coincidentally was Pauline’s birthday), we both gave up a disgusting habit of many years as two hundred “international passports to smoking pleasure” were consigned to a watery grave (my apologies in retrospect for the marine littering). Pauline was not much more than a social smoker, but for me, who had consistently puffed my way through a pack Stuyvies every four-hour watch for the past eight years or so, it was a significant achievement, and one for which 50 years later, I continue to regard as a breakthrough.

The other milestone, I’m very pleased to say, was equally as long-lasting and very much more gratifying. On a Monday evening in late July, we boarded a British Airways Boeing 707 at Trinidad’s Piarco International Airport and, after a brief stop at the nearby island of Antigua, we were several hours later, sleep deprived and stiff, in a black cab making our way through the congested Monday morning traffic of a damp and drizzly London, headed for St Pancras station and the train to Nottingham. We had just two weeks to plan, organise and deliver a wedding - ours.  

We had been nearly six months on Hyacinth and with previous accumulated leave we had enough time and money to get married, have a get-together with family and friends and have a short holiday, before heading back to sea and whichever of their fleet, Messrs Rederiet Lindinger A/S decided needed a new First Engineer.

The wedding was a triumph. There were times over the two weeks leading up to it when we thought it was going to be anything but that. The first challenge was finding a church where we could be married. We soon learned that one doesn’t just lob up at the church door and say can you marry us next week. After numerous disappointments, we finally came to a lovely old church built in the 1870s, the Lower Parliament Street Methodist Church where a charming old cleric agreed that he would carry out the service for us on 10^th August. As it turned out, he retired from ill health the following week and it was to be his last wedding service after what we later learned was a long and highly respected career in the Ministry. We both later felt that he surely put as much empathy into the ceremony as he had no doubt done over 40 years of service. It felt very personal.

We were joined by friends and family on both sides. My old school friends from Cairns, Mal and Ian and their wives, Kay and Ellen were there and Pam and my best man, John from my Sydney days. My mother made the trip from Brisbane and there were aunts, uncles and cousins in abundance.

There was a small hiccup when I gave my cousin Donald, the job of filming the event using my recently acquired Kodak cine camera, complete with film cartridge – except that sadly, I had forgotten to include the cartridge, so the entire event was “filmed” with the most important element of the production missing.

The wedding service took place during the middle of the afternoon, giving ample time to recover from the preceding night’s round of Nottingham pubs with the Australian contingent. I’m told that Pauline had a more subdued “hen night” – I am not persuaded to believe this.

The reception was held at the Strathdon Hotel, one of the newer hotels near the city centre and when the speeches and wine eventually dried up, I put another fifty pounds on the bar which remarkably kept everyone lubricated until at least 11 o’clock, such was the buying power in 1974 when the price of beer was about 20 pence per pint. We even had a couple of Rolls Royce limousines which cost us the princely some of twenty pounds.

It was a bloody good shindig, one that we have never forgotten, and we made certain that we were the last to leave.

We had determined that after the wedding we would head off to Australia where Pauline would meet more of my family and see my homeland. Before that however, we decided it would be fun to take the two mothers on a little trip, so for the next week we enjoyed a driving holiday through the southwest of England with Maisie and Eileen. On the surface, it may seem like an ordeal with two mothers with completely different personalities all squeezed into a little rental car driving around historic towns and villages from Ludlow to Lands End. I’m not saying it wasn’t without its moments – and there is no doubt that my extroverted mother could be hard work at times – but we got through it, and no one suffered any long-term effects.

Green Island is a small coral cay some 25 to 30 km off the coast of Cairns right in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. As a younger person, growing up in Cairns, a casual response to the question of where one might be going for a holiday might be, “Oh, we’re not doing much this year, just going over to the Island for a couple of days.”  In other words, it wasn’t anywhere special, to anyone living in a town like Cairns – and yet, here were Pauline and I, with potentially the world at our feet, opting to fly 12,000 miles from Nottingham to spend a few days on the Island. It was special to us.

In 2024, Green Island has a luxury five-star hotel and is likely to set you back about $4,000 for a week on the island. In 1974, we stayed in cabins which were built 30 years earlier and paid $40 a night. It was the perfect place to honeymoon with little to do other than take a one-hour walk on fine coral sand right around the island, stroll through the interior of the island through the coconut palms and vine-thicket rain forest, wade in the shallows in sparkling clear water amid teeming colourful aquatic life, drink our share of local beer and gorge ourselves everyday on enormous tropical fruit breakfasts and dinners which included huge serves of freshly caught coral trout, red emperor, sweet lip, snapper, Spanish mackerel and prawns the size of crayfish.

Each morning around 10 o’clock a hoard of day-trippers would arrive by launch from the mainland, and the beaches and the resort bar and the glass-bottom boats were soon crowded. To say crowded is probably an exaggeration – it wasn’t like they had arrived on an ocean liner – the Hayles launch carried around 250 or so passengers, and during the peak period when there were two launches running, we might have had 500 or so people on the island. At 3 PM the same boats would carry them all back to Cairns and we were once again a small group of marooned islanders with our own private beaches and private cabins. It was heaven.

I haven’t been back to the island since then – I suspect I would be disappointed.

All good things must end, I had a job to do and needed to return to work – not the least, because we were running out of funds.  We returned to Sydney and stayed for a few days with my old shipmate from Francis Drake, Bob, of whom I have written in previous chapters and his girlfriend, Pauline at a lovely two-storey terrace house in Balmain that they were renting at the time (Bob and Pauline would later be our long-term North Epping neighbours - but that was all 10 or 15 years down the track).  The funds were by now in need of topping up, and since I still had a current taxi-driver licence, I was able to grab a few night shifts with ABC Cabs (maybe I’ll tell you about my brief career as a cab driver in another chapter).

My employers in Copenhagen had originally planned for me to join the newest ship in the fleet, Lindinger Jade on her way to Mombasa, but a lengthy bout of influenza for Pauline meant we weren't going anywhere for a while so I reluctantly turned it down. We didn’t want to wear out our welcome however, and when about ten days later,  Copenhagen wired me saying that the first engineer who had replaced me on Hyacinth had come down with appendicitis, and was I able to return to my old ship, I jumped at the chance. 

On a bright spring morning a few days after my 29^th birthday, we boarded a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles and after a couple of stop overs at airports in Central America, arrived hot and exhausted at Panama City where we were soon welcomed back on board - back in the same cabin that we had left a couple of months earlier. Not much had changed, the frikadeller were as tasty as always, the Pabst Blue Ribbon was cold, the cabin hadn’t got any larger (I had) and the TV reception was still pretty much non-existent most of the time.

Hyacinth was getting ready to leave for Puntarenas on the western coast of Costa Rica and was taking on fuel in Panama ready to depart within hours.

I checked the spare parts inventory with 2^nd engineer Erik, and before long we had cleared customs, cast off and were making our way south across Panama Bay towards Azuero Peninsula where we would turn west and follow the shoreline along the Central American isthmus for the next two or three days to our destination. There was just enough time for Pauline to get seasick and get over it, before we turned around and made the voyage east back to Panama and through the Canal for the homeward trip to US ports in the Gulf of Mexico.     

The next five months seemed to take no time at all. I would almost call it uneventful, but it never was. We were determined not to take any of this for granted, knowing that some day (like now) this would be a distant memory. There were indeed many highlights, too many to mention without stretching this into an overlong running commentary - but here's just a few:

·        A brief bout of illness in Georgetown Guyana where I developed the most painful stomach cramps I’ve ever experienced, exacerbated by a long and painful ambulance ride from our berth up the Demerara River in Guyana to the main Georgetown Hospital where I was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection (OK, not exactly a highlight);

·        A delightful Christmas in St Croix, Virgin Islands followed by an equally enjoyable New Year in San Juan, Puerto Rico;

·        A week in drydock in Willemstad, Curaçao enjoying the delights of Dutch Caribbean cuisine and Amstel beer;

·        Not least – enjoying the pleasures of our own floating hotel. It wasn’t the Queen Mary and certainly not my daddy’s yacht (we never had one), but we had the Monkey Island (the space on top of the bridge) to ourselves most of the time, and this was indeed the Caribbean.

Lest there be any mistake – I was working as well – keeping watch twelve hours per day (six on, six off), ensuring in between watches that those troublesome maintenance tasks and pesky spare parts were always to hand should they ever be needed.

It is also true that Pauline didn’t just laze around recovering from sea sickness, reading Dennis Wheatley, or sending postcards home. She was signed on to the manifest as a “supernumerary” and that meant that if there were jobs to be done whether typing the Captain’s reports or cleaning the heads – sea legs permitting, she was up for it.

Eventually of course, it was time for to go home. So on a stormy evening in late March of 1975, we boarded a National Airlines flight from Miami and after some serious turbulence soon after taking off into the South Atlantic, we headed home to the UK to take some leave and think about what was next in store for us.

Sailing for the Golden Fleece - Fanny Duck (Part 1)

April 1968 – one of the hottest days on record for this time of the year in Brisbane.  A smart-looking grey-green ship, a plume of fine white smoke wafting from its orange funnel, slips her moorings from Hamilton Wharf and slowly drifts towards the middle of a listless Brisbane River. At a ship’s length or more from her berth, a couple of small brawny tugs gently haul on her bow, turning her through 180 degrees until she faces downstream towards Moreton Bay and the mouth of the river, some 30 km away.  The remains of a few paper streamers which had, until a minute ago connected passengers and well-wishers on the shore are now floating in the wind against the outward side of the ship or drifting into the water to be consumed by the wash from the large bronze four-bladed propeller which has begun purposefully churning a metre below the surface of the water.

This is the cargo passenger vessel SS Francis Drake. With 120 passengers aboard and 150 tons of refrigerated cargo, she is bound for the Philippines on the first leg of her scheduled two-month round-trip to the Far East.

I’m seeing none of this – I’m on the bottom plates of the engine room, several metres below the water line, alongside my new shipmate, Fifth Engineer Jimmy Leong as we stand at the controls of the large Vickers Armstrong steam turbine engine which will push us along, once we are in the open sea at a comfortable 15 knots.

It’s hotter down here. Four inches of insulated lagging doesn’t stop radiant heat from the pipes delivering superheated steam from the large water tube boilers above my head to the high-pressure turbine of the main engine. Like ships’ engine rooms everywhere, it is always a good deal warmer here than on the bridge.

I’m the other Fifth Engineer and I stand next to Jimmy watching his every move in what, for the moment, is a spotless white boilersuit. Jimmy is more senior than me and has charge of the watch, a fact for which I am most grateful, this being my first “SS” after previously serving only on “MVs”.

After the compact single deck machine space of MV Viajero, the multi-levelled engine room here is cavernous. Alongside the turbine propulsion unit, the space also houses auxiliary turbine-operated AC generators, refrigerating compressors, air compressors, purifiers and a condenser which converts low pressure exhaust steam from the turbine to condensate which is returned as feedwater to the boilers.

There is a lot for me to learn about steam propulsion, not the least of which is that unlike the internal combustion cycle which describes a diesel engine, the steam turbine combustion takes place externally in the boilers. All that aside, and in contrast to some of the other ships I’ve been on over the past couple of years, I’m in a clean engine room, no less noisy than any other I’ve seen, with a high-pitched gear box connected to the propeller shaft whining in my ears and making conversation almost impossible without shouting directly into someone’s ear – but most definitely cleaner – and no fuel valves!

So what brings me here?

Three months ashore, working as an estimator for a large engineering construction company in downtown Brisbane had been enough for me. After a couple of years sailing around the world on British cargo ships, which included a spectacular year on the Amazon River, I clearly wasn’t ready to settle down and behave like a grownup, so when the opportunity arose, via a lunchtime stroll into the offices of H C Sleigh the operators of Dominion Line, I jumped at it and here I am. 

There is a lot more to get used to than just the technical stuff. The wearing of uniforms (not just one) is a far cry from the relaxed attitude of Baron Jedburgh and Viajero where the focus was on comfort and minimal trips to the ship’s laundry.

I’m also getting used to more people on board. In addition to the passengers, we have a large crew which includes deck officers, engineers, catering staff, administrators and passenger service providers plus a Hong Kong Chinese crew. Over the course of the next year, there are regular changes to personnel as crew members take leave, or transfer to other ships in the fleet, so I will never get to know everyone the way I have done on previous ships. In my whole time on board, I don’t recall exchanging a single word with the Ship’s Captain or the Chief Mate. 

We have our own engineer’s mess, where staff on duty are catered for – the rules being that in order to use the duty mess you must actually be on duty, and you must be wearing a clean boilersuit. I was not the first person to be turned away from the mess for looking like I had just come out from under the bilge plates – which I probably had. Otherwise all ship’s officers are required in full uniform in the ship’s dining room at their assigned tables which includes passengers – so best behaviour, best table manners.

Francis Drake is anything but a young ship. Built in 1947 at the Vickers Armstrong shipyard in Newcastle, UK as the SS Nova Scotia for the Furness Warren Line she operated for 15 years alongside her sister ship SS Newfoundland between Liverpool and the Canadian ports of Halifax, New Brunswick and St John’s, Newfoundland. The two vessels were sold to Dominion Navigation Co in the early 1960s and after extensive fitout and modification which included extended accommodation, air-conditioning and capacity for refrigerated cargo, they were relaunched into service in the Far East and Australia as Francis Drake and George Anson.  

The ship’s operator and my employer is H C Sleigh & Co, an Australian firm of shipowners and petroleum products, mostly known for the large merino sheep logo which identifies the Golden Fleece brand of products.

She’s no youngster, but thanks to the refit a couple of years ago, she’s clean and seaworthy and despite the requirement for a little more spit and polish than I’m used to, I no longer have to think about putting condensed milk straight from the can into my tea when the fresh milk runs out as we did on Baron Jedburgh.

As I mentioned earlier, wearing of uniform is a requirement whenever we’re in any of the public areas - number nines, number tens, mess undress; I’m rather surprised they didn’t ask me to wear a sword!

 I’m the only new person on board.  I’m replacing the third engineer who has been transferred to another ship. As a result, all the other engineers were promoted which left a requirement for a junior watchkeeping fiver – me.  They are a good bunch.  The third and fourth engineers are from Hong Kong while Jimmy, my fellow fifth engineer on the 4 to 8 watch is Singaporean.

Graham, the second engineer is not much older than me. A softly spoken, Melbournian, this is his first voyage as second, but not his first trip on Fanny Duck as the ship is affectionately known.  He’s a talented engineer, knows the ship well and has a relaxed and calming manner which is in stark contrast to his boss, the Chief Engineer who on the rare occasions when he is seen, looks like he’s ready to fire someone – we keep out of his way.

There are two other characters in the engineering accommodation. My next-door neighbour on one side is the Electrical Engineer, Jimmy Warburton.  Jimmy is a cool guy, whose prized possession is a state of the art, reel to reel audio system which takes up most of the space on his desk and is a source of envy to all. Jimmy is also a passionate St Kilda supporter and no hospitality session with Jimmy is complete without tales of Allan Jeans, Carl Ditterich and the 1966 Premiership.

My other neighbour is the Refrigeration Engineer – a curly-haired former Orient Line graduate from Plymouth.  Bob Pope will become a good friend and after our sea-faring days, we will, at various times be work colleagues, housemates and fellow-travellers through a European winter in an old 3-litre Rover. We will later live within a few hundred yards of each other in the same Sydney suburb where we’ll enjoy many family barbecues reminiscing and telling tall stories about these times. All that is in the future, today Bob is another cool guy who has an extensive collection of knock-off vinyl LPs from Taiwan with a strong focus on The Rolling Stones, The Who and Joe Cocker – all good stuff.  Bob recently transferred to Francis Drake from her sister ship George Anson, so he already knows his way around, and quickly introduces me to the ship’s many social activities.

Finally, in introducing my shipmates I can’t forget the female members of crew. The ship’s executive officers includes a nursing sister, a writer (who is really an assistant purser), a shopkeeper and a hairdresser. They are a cheerful and friendly group and, as I learn over the next few months, a pleasure to sail with and great fun on a shore run.

Unlike a cargo tramp, we know exactly where we’re going and when we’ll be there. Starting the voyage from her home port of Melbourne a couple of weeks before I joined, she stopped on the way for two or three days in Sydney, before heading north to Brisbane the last of her Australian ports. She is now enroute to Manila, Hong Kong, Keelung (Taiwan) and Yokohama (Japan).  The return trip south stops at Guam and Rabaul before heading back home to Melbourne and preparation for the next round trip.

I never actually intended that these stories turn into a series of travelogues. My focus has been in seeking to paint a picture of life on board, to talk of the many wonderful characters I enjoyed sailing with (and one or two I didn’t) and in some small way share a few of the experiences as they happened.

Having said that, I think there’s more to tell, but I don’t want to test your patience so I’m going to leave it for my next chapter – which I’m looking forward to writing (I hope you share the sentiment).

The Apprentice

 In early December 1965, I finished five years of servitude as an apprentice fitter and turner at the local brewery.  I’m exaggerating I know, although there were times when it felt like I was under a form of feudal bondage, and the documentation that I signed in the presence of my father five years earlier used such dramatic expressions as "...wilful disobedience of lawful commands of the employer, his managers, foremen and other servants having authority” and stressed the need to avoid being “...slothful, negligent, dishonest or in any other way guilty of gross misbehaviour” under penalty of discharge of services; it was, all the same, a great place for a young man to learn an engineering trade and I look back with affectionate memories on that time in my life. The work was hard, the study hours were long and played merry hell with that young man’s social life, but the diversity of the work and the practical experience would ground me in so many ways over the following years. 

I wrote about my first few days at the brewery in an earlier post (The First Job - Cairns 1960). Today I want to round that off and talk about my last year there and look back on the experience a little more holistically (if that’s possible).

I was not everybody’s favourite apprentice during that last year. At one point, I was obliquely involved in an industrial relations dispute, the result being that I was regarded by some as a young agitator spending too much time hanging around the wrong group and not enough time getting on with work. In those early nineteen sixties with the war still a recent memory for anyone over 40, there was a core of fedora wearing, trade unionists whose appointed task it was to improve underpaid, unfair and unsafe working conditions. They were by no means all paragons of virtue and morality; some just liked the power or wanted a fight – but even at that tender age (or maybe specifically at that age), I was all for a good wage for the worker. 

These were the days of the True Believer, and it was important to choose sides.  There were many of the population who cherished Queen and Empire and were admirers of long-time conservative Prime Minister Bob Menzies; and there were others who had been advocates of former Labor leaders, John Curtin and Ben Chifley and who continued to support the right of the working man to lay down his tools and walk off the job (often straight to the pub) for higher pay and safer conditions. 

This is all of course, an over-simplification. My own father, workshop superintendent at the local City Council workshops; a man who had served his own apprenticeship many years earlier as a motor mechanic working in England between the two wars and later owned his own garage under the shadow of Nottingham Castle, was as he described himself – “right down the middle”.  Throughout his life, I never knew which way he voted in any election. When I asked him, he would say, “it’s a secret ballot for a reason, son – no one needs to know.”

Unlike my father, Bill Stone made no secret of where he stood.  He was a returned serviceman, a senior engine driver and the local organiser for the Federated Engine Drivers and Fireman’s Association.   Bill was always well dressed in tailored short sleeved shirt, short trousers, tropical style long socks and was rarely seen without his grey felt narrow-brimmed hat.  In contrast with his fellow engine drivers and boiler attendants, Bill was never seen in a pair of overalls or a boilersuit. He was an articulate man who along with his co-workers, maintained an engine room that was spotless and grease-free.  Ammonia compressors used for refrigeration; great horizontal piston machines with flywheels half as big again as any man;  chattering high speed vertical engines and a great English Electric diesel powered generator - all of them high gloss cream in colour such that with its green walls and polished red floors the whole area could have hosted a Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Queensland Country Women's Association were it not for the noise of the engines and the occasional fugitive whiff of escaped ammonia.

Bill epitomized the no-nonsense, plain-speaking Labor supporter of the 1960s.  He was a loyal, hard-working man whose motivation in life was to want nothing more than a university education for his children and a fair share of the fruits of his labours.  He went on to become the federal secretary of his organisation and was later awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his services to trade unionism. The dispute which took place toward the end of my final year progressed into a prolonged and at times bitter strike.  In accordance with our Terms of Indenture, apprentices were not permitted to stop work, but I was conspicuously sympathetic of my comrades, and this did little for my career enhancement.

The chief engineer, Michael Kerry (Mick) Hawney was not my greatest fan, although years later we gained a lot more respect for each other. Mick went on to become something of an icon in the Australian brewing industry and would play a significant role in the development of the Yatala Brewery in Southeast Queensland in the 1980s which later became one of the largest and most efficient breweries in the country – it still is. Mick helpfully mentioned to me that it would in my best interest to look elsewhere for employment once my five years was complete - it was wise advice. 

There was plenty of work for a qualified man in those days and it did not concern me at all that I might soon be unemployed.  Tradesmen earned a respectable income in those days – at least twenty pounds for a 40-hour week plus overtime and there was always plenty of overtime. 

As things turned out, I was able to depart gracefully when shortly before my last week as an apprentice, a family friend who was also an executive at the Cairns Harbour Board, asked my father whether I might be interested in a seagoing career. It so happened there was a British ship in port which was short of an engineer and if I was up for it, there was a job as an engineers’ assistant, with the potential for promotion to engineer when a position became available. 

Was I interested? You bet I was!

It was to be the end of five years of travelling the kilometre or so to work from my parent's home at the northern end of Draper Street. For the first couple of years I made the journey on my old Malvern Star bicycle, then later a selection of motorcycles each one slightly bigger than its predecessor, and finally a slightly worse for wear aging Holden sedan. 

Much had happened during those five years, both personally and in the outside world. Many happy memories; some very sad ones. Here’s just a few – there were many more.

·    Gathering around the open hatch door of the workshop storeroom with several other workmates listening to the cricket on storeman Lionel’s radio when Richie Benaud’s Australians and Frank Worrell’s West Indies tied that magnificent Test Match at the Gabba during the very first week of my apprenticeship in 1960.

·    Selling tickets to friends and family in the Annual Brewery Social Club Melbourne Cup sweep and then listening with excitement to that same transistor radio as the race was run and won.  In 1963, I sold the winning ticket (Gatum Gatum) to a friend, but I have no idea now what the prize money was – it seemed like a lot at the time.

·    The death of a former schoolmate and fellow apprentice who was tragically killed in an accident at work which, even more than fifty years after the event, is painful to recall.  A young 20-year-old life, gone – never to experience the joys of living and loving, and children, and grandchildren. What a waste. 

·    Worrying whether my birth date would be drawn from the ballot in 1964 meaning conscription to serve in the Australian Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. I missed out, others were not so fortunate.

·    Going on road trips with a team of brewery fitters to one or more of the brewery owned hotels to carry out construction work – including a memorable visit to the Mount Garnet Hotel in November 1961 where I had the unpleasant job of painting the inside of a recently installed corrugated iron water tank with bitumen cement, which burned my eyes and nose for hours – and later listening and sharing an underage glass of Cairns Draught as Lord Fury won the Cup.

·    Six months working in the drawing office under the watchful eye of one of Mick’s engineers, Eddie Patton, who taught me more about the need for neatness and accuracy than I ever learned at school. Eddie had an unfortunate speech impediment and would often seem to finish a sentence on a Monday morning, where he appeared to have left it the previous Friday, with a short, “…and also Michael, how are you this morning?”  Eddie was a gentle man and a clever engineer, who later became the Chief Engineer at the Rockhampton Brewery.

·    Fitters, and boilermakers, and other maintenance and construction workers who looked after each, told tall tales and made me laugh – and sometimes want to cry. Howard Chalk (a funny man, without any doubt the most artistic craftsman ever to don a welding mask); Frank Tanswell (fitter and part-time crocodile hunter); John Scheinpflug; Gordon Dilger (no one could strip down, repair and reassemble an engine and not spill a single drop of oil, or get the slightest particle of swarf or dirt on himself or his immaculate working clothes quite like Gordon), Ted Dowker; Alan McKenzie; Ken Northey; Noel Cook (a source of jokes and parody songs, that I continue to force upon my exhausted family today); Bobby Ward (always with a smile on a face that said, “I’ve been slapped about a bit”), John Ranford, Jim Read, Brian Fitzsimmons (who played hooker for the Australian Rugby League team in 1967 during the time when good scrimmaging was an art form).  Most, if not all of them are gone now; but so much of what I learned and took into later life and experience came from working alongside these men.  

·    I must not forget Paddy O’Brien, whose tales about “the small ships” that he served on during the war, were legends around the shop floor – if only 10% of them were true…

·    Gordon Williams, the workshop foreman and godfather figure to all the apprentices. Gordon had also served on small ships, but his only comment about his war service was that he spent most of it seasick. If anyone taught me how to hold a bastard file properly or not get carborundum in my eyes while using a grinder, or how to stand over a fast-rotating lathe or a pulsing shaper without losing a finger, it was Gordon Williams – we all loved that man.

This was my five years of servitude – I may not have always loved it at the time, but with hindsight, I had no idea how good it was.

Thus it was that on the 5th of December 1965, exactly five years to the day that I had started as a fresh-faced schoolboy, I punched my Bundy Card for the last time and walked out of Northern Australian Breweries as a qualified mechanical fitter and turner, ready for the next stage of my life.

This was the chance I had been waiting for, and within a few days I had signed on as a crew member on the MV Baron Jedburgh. I was its most junior of junior assistants. My official title was donkey-greaser, and my job was to assist the ship’s engineers as offsider and general factotum.

Stay tuned for A Ship of My Own.

 

A Southern Christmas 2001 - Day 34 (the last entry)

This is it, dear Reader. The last journal entry from our memorable trip to Antarctica 23 years ago.  

If you have managed to stick with it from Day 1, you have my admiration and gratitude - thank you for your resilience.  If you have no idea what this is all about and have just dropped in randomly, please take a moment to go back to Day 1 (HERE) and hopefully, if what I have written appeals to you, we'll see you back here in a few days.

I've thoroughly enjoyed re-visiting these memories, and while I realised of course, at the start of this exercise, that what I'm doing here is the very height of self-indulgence on my part - I did it anyway!

Thursday 16th January 2002 

Southern Ocean 

This will be my last journal entry for the trip. Barring vessels in distress, lost refugee ships, or pirates, we expect to have an uneventful voyage from here and we will be making our way up the Derwent River towards Hobart and home in about six days’ from now. 

We had a competition to design a voyage tee-shirt. My contribution was to offer to have Collex pay for them if we could put our logo on the sleeve. I think it was Tamara who came up with the winning design.

I mentioned yesterday about the Antarctic waste problems and the many challenges it presents. But what else did we learn from the voyage? Well, perhaps more than anything we learned about the human relations aspect of such a voyage. Being thrown together with a wide variety of people and personalities, even for this short period of time, has provided an opportunity to learn something about people’s characters as well as our own. I spent nearly ten years on board ship during my marine engineering career, but that was a long time ago and from today's perspective of a reasonably comfortable lifestyle, with plenty of personal space whenever it is needed, this kibbutz-style of living three to a cabin (four at one stage) and the sharing of all facilities takes getting used to. I never really feel actually on my own until I draw the little sliding curtain on the 2 metre long by 1.2-metre-wide capsule which is my bunk. There is no escape. If I go to the bar for a drink, or to the ship’s gym (sadly, not something I have done often enough) or to the video room to watch a movie, or the conference room to check or write an e-mail, I share the same space, with the same people with whom I have had breakfast, lunch and dinner. And yet it really is not a bad thing. This has been a remarkably happy and friendly voyage, and there is something agreeable about the experience of strangers becoming friends and of unfamiliar faces becoming familiar. On the way south, we were a comparatively small group of 40 expeditioners and 20 crew and the eight days it took us to get to Casey, provided ample time for us to become a friendly community. We shared a barbecue on the Trawl Deck and had a great time on Christmas Day. We enjoyed the fun of watching a hirsute bunch of people become follicly challenged as they shaved their heads for Camp Quality, and we had the opportunity to learn a lot about the different reasons we all had for coming on the voyage. There were wintering expeditioners on their way to face 14 months of isolation; marine scientists carrying out work enroute; and individuals like Yann and myself who had some project involvement and for which a visit to Casey provided valuable information in carrying out their tasks. 

Once we arrived in Casey, we were overwhelmed by all the new faces. We, who had been comfortable in our ship-board environment were suddenly the visitors; the interlopers who were invading the space of the fifty or so expeditioners who made up the 2001 Casey summerers and winterers. We joined them in the Red Shed for meals and socialised with them in Splinters Lounge, but we knew that we were the round-trippers who were now taking up room in their territory. Then we left Casey, and those fifty or so Caseyites came with us, leaving behind the next lot of winterers who had travelled south with us. The ship was now not so quiet and we, who’d had the luxury of being the sole occupants of a four-berth cabin, were now three to a room. 

Then the decision was made to turn left, instead of right when we came out of the ice. We weren’t going home after all, or at least not just yet. First, we had to see what help we could give Polar Bird, a few days away to the west of us. It was during this time that those strange Caseyites who had joined us, turned out not to be so strange after all. Those odd people with names like Critter and Fishbuster and Pepé, with their green and orange hair and their familiarity with each other, started to appear normal and friendly people, and quite a pleasure to be with. Is it something special about the type of people who come to the Antarctic, or is it true of people everywhere? I guess it’s because living and working in the cities and towns and in the busy world of today, the only people we really need to know well are our immediate families and friends and that anyone else is just a bystander. 

I’m reminded of one of the comments of AAD’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Peter Gormley at our briefing on Day One, the morning before we sailed. He said, “When you sit across the table from the same fellow for four or six or twelve months, or however long you’re away for, and even though he cleans the food out of his beard with his fork, you’d better get used to it and learn to live with it, because he’s going to be there again tomorrow. So the message I leave you with is this: be kind to each other.” 

And so it was when we picked up the Mawson crowd from Polar Bird. By this stage, we had over 100 souls on board, and lunch and dinner required two sittings. But still morale was high and the attitude of all one of comfortable cordiality. Alright, the rationing of the beer to one can of VB per day was a bit of a drag, especially when the Guinness ran out, but there are still a few cases of Jacob’s Creek on board and the Light Ice at least quenches the thirst. 

It’s not just the expeditioners either. Being back on the deck of a ship after my own sea-going career many years earlier was an absolute pleasure and not one I had ever anticipated. I was quite chuffed when Evan, the ship's Chief Engineer, on learning of my previous engine room experience, inquired whether my marine engineering qualifications were still valid – if so, perhaps I’d like to do a couple of watches! I kind of think he was kidding, but I wasn’t completely sure. The officers and crew were to a man and woman, some of the most skilled and capable people I had come across – maybe it’s something to do with being on the Antarctic run, and the fact that this must be one of the last pioneering spots on the planet. The comment from our ship's captain, Tony encapsulated it all when he said to me one day, “A lot of people think that the two best jobs in Australia are Prime Minister and captain of the Australian Cricket Team. They are all wrong – this is!” 

It’s been a trip that I would not have missed for the world. Had Yann and I known beforehand how long we would have been away, we would have most likely decided not to come. Our jobs have suffered during this extended absence, and it’s been unfair to our families. From a personal perspective, I probably could not have been away at a worse time with bushfires in Sydney at one point threatening the suburb where I live and I am so thankful that I have a wonderful partner in my life who said, “Go, you’ll never get another opportunity.” I believe that during this time, Doug, my boss at Veolia in Sydney sent me the very first email he ever sent in his life, complete with punctuation errors it read, 

“Dear Mike, Do yOU still work for CoLLex?” 

But I’ve now been Antarctica and witnessed the wonders of that special part of our planet which is its very engine room. The place from where the currents and winds originate; where circumpolar low-pressure systems are formed and spun off into the lower latitudes; where much unique wildlife exists – the whales, seals, petrels and most of all those comical little penguins. 

It has been a privilege and not one I will ever take for granted. I just know that the next time I go to an event where there are thousands of people like a packed footie stadium, I will look around at the crowd and think to myself, “How many of YOU have been to Antarctica?” 

It’s a place where scientific research provides us with so much information about the life and future of our planet; where the glaciologists, geo-physicists, earth and marine scientists and biologists come to study those things which look at climate patterns, the ozone layer and the biodiversity of life. I’m so pleased to have made this trip and delighted that Doug Dean, Collex and Veolia have made a commitment to helping to return the White Continent to a condition where our human impact is minimal. 

I’ll be back. 

Footnote 2025 

I never did go back – or at least as I write this, I haven’t made it back yet. Maybe I’ll get there one day as a tourist, but it is unlikely to happen any other way.  However, much to my family's amusement (or maybe not), I am still wearing the tee-shirt.

The waste in Antarctica particularly at the old Wilkes base continues to be an issue. Australia is not alone with this problem. A quick google search will disclose that there are legacy waste sites at many other bases which are owned and operated by Antarctic Treaty nations. 

I am certain that if a similar situation existed at a more accessible or visible Australian territory such as a former mining site say, the news would be on the front pages. It may be unkind to say that out of sight, means out of mind, but I cannot forget that this is Australian Antarctic Territory and there can be no doubt that it continues to present a serious problem. 

Will it be fixed in my lifetime? I sincerely doubt it. 

The airport at Wilkins, about 70km from Casey was completed in 2007 and most expeditioners now travel by Airbus on the four and half hour flight from Hobart. This reduces the amount of work that the charter ships need to do in terms of carrying expeditioners, but regular visits for refuelling and the carrying out of scientific marine work goes on. 

The dear old orange roughie, Aurora has gone. After over 150 trips to Antarctica she carried out her last assignment five years ago. She has been replaced by Nuyina a larger, faster and more powerful vessel. I did some research on the current whereabouts of Aurora. When last seen she was alongside the wharf in Vung Tau, Vietnam as the Cyprus registered, Aurora Dubai. No longer certified as an ice breaker, she is described as a supply vessel and my guess is that her days are numbered. 

Polar Bird did her last voyage for Antarctic Division in 2003. To my surprise, she is still active as Israeli owned and registered general cargo vessel Almog, last sighted in Haifa. 

It was, as I said in my diary, the journey of a lifetime. One particular moment that keeps coming back to me is standing alone on the Helideck right at the ship's stern, at about three o'clock in the morning. We had seen our last iceberg a few hours earlier and Aurora was in open sea making good progress in a gentle swell. I must have stood on that deck for an hour, looking out at the silver reflection on the sea of a billion stars overhead and thinking, I need to capture this memory for ever - because it is unlikely to ever happen again. 

To people like Martin Riddle and Ian Snape and the many others involved in the human impact and clean up programs, I acknowledge the critical contribution you have made in Antarctic research over many years. 

To those expeditioners I was fortunate to spend time with: Steve the kelp expert; Ann and Mary the lichen and moss ladies; glaciologist Mark; krill master Angela; risk manager (and great voice-over actor) Gordon; Lucinda from the ANARE Club; voyage leader Greg; deputy leader Simon; Station leaders John and Paul and those whose names I have forgotten, but certainly not your involvement and commitment, I remain in awe of your work.

To the ship's officers and crew, particularly skipper Tony; chief mate Scott (who later captained Aurora's replacement, Nuyina); second mate Jake; third mate Carmen; chief engineer Evan; Pilot Ric; Elvis; King Neptune; and Mark (who lost more hair on the charity night that most of us can grow in a life time), I thank you for your professionalism and your good will.

To those AAD executives like Tony Press and Kim Pitt and later Kim Ellis, it was a privilege to have known and worked with you. I dips my lid to all of you, expeditioners and mariners alike.

I'd also like to say a very special thank you to my colleague and friend on the trip, Yann Moreau - you were a great shipmate. 

Finally, thank you, Doug Dean – RIP.

A Southern Christmas 2001 - Day 33 (Homeward Bound)

Welcome to the penultimate journal entry.  We were on our way home and not too far away from returning to Earth.  I hope you've enjoyed it so far - only one more to go after this...

Wednesday 16th January 2002 

Southern Ocean (55 deg S, 92 deg E) 

Late yesterday afternoon, Yann was on the bridge deck photographing what may well be the last iceberg we will see. I asked him why he was taking a picture of such a pathetic little lump of ice when we had hundreds of pictures of some of the most majestic looking structures imaginable, he responded by reminding me how excited we were to see the first, and he felt that we should treat the last with the same respect. Can’t argue with that. 

Having freed Polar Bird, we sailed in convoy for a few hours, and it was a wonderful sight to see the two vessels in their brilliant orange livery gliding through the water on such a bright, cold sunny day. We might easily have been at a regatta on the Solent were it not for the ever present wandering albatross. It became even more of a social event later that morning when we rendezvoused with the Chinese Icebreaker, Xue Long. A great opportunity for photos, radio chit-chat and a lot of waving. 

Later, as Polar Bird at last took her leave from us, it was to a stirring rendition of Die Walküre’s evocative "Ride of the Valkyries" blasting from her on-board speakers across the every increasing gap between the two vessels. It wasn’t just the sea-spray which was making our eyes water. 

When we left Hobart nearly five weeks ago, we had no idea what was in store. We were looking forward to a short and uneventful three-week round trip. A chance to understand at first hand the waste problems of the Antarctic, meet the people involved and visit the project sites at Casey and Wilkes. We certainly accomplished this. We understand the scope and size of the challenge and as a consequence, are more committed than ever in ensuring the success of the program. 

Now that we’re on the way home, someone has organised a Murder Game. The rules are simple, everyone is given a piece of paper with the name of their murder victim on it. Killing your victim is simple – you must be alone in a room, or a corridor with him or her and simply say, ‘You’re dead.’ The victim then gives you the name of their intended target, which then becomes your target. The game can last for a week or longer. I lasted less than an hour. At 7.00 o’clock that the morning the game started, I ducked into the Conference Room to send an e-mail. Two minutes later, big Dan from Casey came in and said, ‘Good morning, Mike, I’ve got some bad news for you, you’re dead.’ 

It was a blessing in disguise as I saw my shipmates and friends slowly deteriorate from normal people into haunted paranoiacs. After several days, Yann said, “It’s not a game anymore, Mike. It’s a nightmare!” 

The ship’s corridors became places where people would only walk about in pairs, and signs appeared around the vessel saying things like, “BT must die” and “Tamara is dead.” As I write this, we are down to five murderers, the rest of us are all dead. 

On Saturday, we’ll be having the finals of the 500 competition, followed by a farewell barbecue on the Trawl Deck. The gym is a hive of activity as people work frantically to take off extra kilos gained over the past year, summer or just weeks depending on whether you are a long-term expeditioner or a round-tripper. One of the expeditioners, Dave has started a swing dancing class which has been well patronised and there are some excellent songstresses on board including Lucinda from ANARE and Aurora’s Third Mate, Carmen. 

Our eagle-eyed skipper, Tony Hansen, caught sight of a huge floating kelp island which disrupted a few people’s equilibrium as we turned in a decent swell to bring it on board for marine ecologist Steve Smith to add to his collection. Steve later told us that he thought it had drifted on Antarctic currents from Kerguelen Island, possibly the world’s most remote island. I think he was also a little sheepish about the broken crockery and disruption which may have been caused by the sudden and sharp left turn we had just made – but no one was really upset – all part of the advancement of knowledge. 

We should arrive at Hobart either late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, fair winds prevailing. I’ve learned that the final waypoint is the Customs House Hotel, so that’s where I’ll be on Wednesday night.

A Southern Christmas 2001 - Day 30 (not stuck)

You may be pleased to read that we are getting close to the end of this nostalgic ramble. 

If you have stayed with me this far, I congratulate you and thank you for your endurance.  If you are reading this for the first time, and want to catch up - HERE's the place to start.

Monday 14th January 2002 

Prydz Bay (68.17 deg S, 75.43 deg E) 

Yesterday morning there was a yellow sticky note on the Bridge door. It said:

 

WE’RE NOT STUCK JUST WAITING… 

The little sign says it all. After several hours of bashing ice and getting nowhere while at all time worrying about the northerly wind closing the ice behind us and closing our line of escape, we have retired to a safe distance. 

If we want to move now, we probably can, but with that same northerly blowing the ice back in on us, it would be hard work and an excessive use of fuel. So the strategy is – wait. 

The break while everyone waits for the change in the weather is a good opportunity for an exhausted crew and voyage party to rest and recover from the sleeplessness of the past few days and get ready for the next ones which are likely to be every bit as challenging. 

It's now late Sunday afternoon and the wind has come around just enough for Tony to give it another go. There have been one or two bar room experts who have decided that we really are stuck and not “waiting” despite our voyage leader's assuring address to everyone at a Mess Deck briefing earlier in the day. The experts are nowhere in sight as we start in the early evening to move in closer towards Polar Bear who is where she has been for the past 24 hours or so, about three or four miles away. 

Our escape route is looking secure, and the weather favourable as we start to work our way down a lead toward Polar Bear's stern. It takes about four hours to make the few miles through the ice and by 0100 we are within three ship lengths of her. The last 300 metres takes eight hours to get us to a point where both ships are almost touching. Breaking ice for a rescue mission is not the same as breaking ice to make progress. We need to provide room for both vessels to manoeuvre and Tony’s aim is to smash enough of the thick unfriendly floes to allow progress by a conventional ship. So we crunch our way for a few ship lengths towards the stern, then do the same thing amidships and then to the bow, turning the ice into manageable lumps. We cannot charge in towards her using full power, otherwise a sudden breakthrough and we would become a battering ram rather than a rescuer - not a happy outcome. 

It would be overstating it to suggest that the precision had to be surgical, but it certainly had to be precise. The skills and teamwork of Tony and his chief mate Scott, and the other team members continued to impress us all and at no time was there ever a suggestion that failure was an option. By mid-afternoon, 24 hours since we first started to move in on Polar Bird, we have mooring ropes attached to her bow, and we begin trying to pull her around and into our track. This is laboriously slow, but after a few hours, we have her in tow and we are making slow progress towards the open sea, 30 or so miles to our north. 

Just when things are starting to look good, the rope separates, and Polar Bird came to an abrupt stop. The ice is particularly unfriendly during this time, and Bird is having great difficulty making any progress at all through our wake. 

We need a stronger towing line, and options are being considered including using one of Polar Bird’s anchor chains. We back up as close as we can to Polar Bird’s bow, trying to chop up some of the gnarly bits with our propeller wash. 

Slowly, ever so slowly she starts making progress again and we push on. The chopper is back in the air, with firstly, skipper Tony Hansen, then voyage leader, Greg Hodge and then Tony again aloft, directing traffic through the elusive little channels and ponds which appear and vanish and appear again somewhere else. 

It is a long, long night with several stops as Polar Bird loses momentum and falls further behind, then catches up as we reverse and start the prop wash exercise again. Persistence and the combined skills of officers, crew, pilots and the voyage leader and his team eventually pay off. At 0400 the watery bits are getting more frequent and the thick rafted floes start to change to lighter ice which breaks easily under Aurora’s bow. By 0430 we are in open water. Amid cheers and handshakes, the tension is released and thoughts of home on both ships became a reality. 

The beer will taste good later tonight.