Pacific & Australia - part fourteen

Having circled the continent, we’re back in Sydney.

Okay, okay, I know I should have gone to Uluru - Ayer’s Rock - taken the Indian Pacific to Perth, climbed Sydney’s Harbour Bridge and petted that koala. Time was when I might have. But hours to climb a rock - mind you, a big rock - and days to sit on a train and look at desert no longer appeal. As for the bridge, why pay $288 (AUS) for a case of severe vertigo? And koalas pee on you. 

No, I took the easy - but not altogether uninteresting - way. The trip was a success, Kathy and Michael were much appreciated companions, and today I’ll be lunching with another friend. Simon’s an inveterate world traveller, so I’m fortunate he’s home in Australia. 

I was going to finish with Maasdam’s stern, Dutch flag and unclimbed bridge.

But, then I remembered some tattered posters on a Fremantle side street. These Afghans, brought to Australia as cameleers, were as much part of the country as British convicts. Or Chinese miners who came here in the Gold Rush. Or South Asians. Or Aboriginals. And so were - and are - their descendants.

The links explain:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-27/peter-drew-poster-street-artist-what-is-an-aussie-campaign/7205024

http://www.news.com.au/national/man-behind-real-australians-say-welcome-campaign-touring-the-country/news-story/f907a6f1c8d98ac89ed69ccf4c839a4e

Who is an Australian? For that matter, who or what is a Canadian? In a time such as this, welcome, acceptance and inclusion seem like a worthwhile note on which to end. 

Pacific & Australia - part thirteen

I had to come all the way to Port Adelaide, Australia, to see a beached tug from just north of Toronto. 

Fearless was an ocean-going salvage tug built in 1945 in Midland, Ontario. She’s been high and dry for decades. There seem to be vague plans for her preservation. 

In far better state is Port Adelaide's deco Harbors Board building with its layered, two-coloured entrance. 

At Australia’s National Railway Museum, I ride a miniature railway, the first time since … since my childhood. The locomotive's named 'Ken' in honour of the late Ken Cain, a train engineer who built it.

Enjoy it so much, I want to go around again!

South Australian Railways 930 class loco from the 1950s.

Wonderful old freight car.

(Since returning home, I’ve discovered there is - in effect - a Canadian national railway museum on Montreal’s outskirts. Never knew.

http://www.exporail.org/en/welcome-to-exporail/ )

Pier and beach at Semaphore - so-called because of its 19th Century signal station - an Adelaide suburb.

‘Super moon’ over Tasmania, unfortunately with only a strip of land to give some perspective. 

In Burnie, Tasmania, I come across this extraordinary deco door, entrance to apartments built in 1937. The design seems, in part, to have been influenced by the sunrise motif, popular in the Thirties.  Not at all what you might expect in a place of about 20,000.

(Something else I found more on after getting home: 52 Alexander Street, Burnie, is for sale - $2,300,000. Seems a lot for a small town, but what do I know?

http://www.realcommercial.com.au/property-hotel+leisure-tas-burnie-502144546 )

Elsewhere in Burnie, more deco …

… including these - one could almost say - sculpted stairs in a small office building. For those following in my footsteps, the stairs are in Lincoln House on Cattley Street.

In Melbourne, a good friend - Richard - we first met on Route 66 - boards Maasdam for ship tour and lunch. Time’s far too short, but the reunion is marvellous. 

(As a parting gift, Richard generously gave me an Australian wool scarf. Since it’s a warmish day, I find myself laughing, doubtless making Richard feel I’m thoroughly ungrateful. Less than a week later, arriving at Toronto airport, the first thing I do is frantically burrow through my luggage for the scarf. It has become one of my favourite winter accoutrements!)

Departing, a view of Melbourne from approximately forty kilometres (about twenty-five miles) away as best as I can calculate.

We leave Port Philip Bay and round ‘The Heads’ into the Bass Strait. This narrow stretch with strong tidal flows can be quite tricky, especially for smaller vessels. 

And it was here, just past ‘The Heads’, an Australian prime minister disappeared in 1967. Harold Holt decided to go for a swim in not the safest of waters. His body was never found.

In Melbourne, there’s a Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre. Australians have a wry sense of humour. 

Pacific & Australia - part twelve

I won’t get to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), but, not to worry, I’m on my way to the world-famous Dog Rock. 

What? You hadn’t heard of Dog Rock? Well, Maasdam is stopping in Albany, Western Australia, and my dogged pre-trip research has turned up a sight that no less than Charles Darwin supposedly visited in 1836.

Worth a postcard even before the Great War …

… there it is on the other side of the road. 

Some see a golden retriever or Labrador, perhaps a basset hound or St. Bernard. Local wits claim it’s a rock-weiler. 

As best as I can discover, a ‘collar’ was first added in the 1930s to prevent road mishaps at night.

The rock's frequented by dog walkers, some of whom may have just stopped at …

… the Dog Rock Vet.

The Dog Rock Motel has been cashing in on the nearby landmark for years.

Nearby is a shopping centre - pretentiously named Dog Rock Boulevarde - at which you’ll find …

… a Dog Rock bottle shop. 

There’s also a Dog Rock Chemist and dog.

With such attractions, I’m amazed that not a single fellow passenger turns up to marvel at the sight. Perhaps they would if they’d read one tourist’s reaction:

‘I can't believe the earth could produce such a sublime work of art … and the painstakingly painted collar takes it to the next level. Get ready to have a religious experience if you go on a pilgrimage to Dog Rock’. (tripadvisor review) 

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Headlines in the ship's newspapers. After a dogfight of an American campaign, a dog’s breakfast ( = confused mess) of an outcome.

‘Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed

To see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon’. (Mother Goose)

Pacific & Australia - part eleven

In 1941, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney (II) sank off Western Australia after a battle with a German raider. 645 men died, Australia’s greatest naval loss of the war, indeed of any of the country’s wars. It was only in 2008 that Sydney was found.

Entering the harbour in Geraldton, Western Australia, two structures stand out on the hill above the little town. They’re part of a Sydney memorial. 

The dome is made up of 645 seagulls representing the Sydney’s crew.

The pillar or stele is both symbolic of Sydney’s prow and a grave marker. All in all, very impressive.

It almost seems sacrilege to transition to the beach and these delightful ‘Rubik’s Cubes’ …

… which turn out to be public washrooms. 

On closer inspection, Thirsty Camel is a Geraldton ‘bottle shop’, one of an Australian chain (‘Join Thirsty Camel's Hump Club for great offers and discounts on your favourite liquor products’). Their original TV ads are a laugh … depending on your sense of humour.

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2007/thirsty-camel/

By the way, camels were brought to the continent - along with rabbits - in the 19th Century. Thousands (and millions of rabbits) still call Australia home.

In 2001, for three months, I circled the world, via Australia and New Zealand, on the British container ship Palliser Bay. She was the last merchant vessel regularly circumnavigating, not by the canals, but by the capes. Following the old clipper ships route, it was a memorable voyage, …

… dipping deep into the Great Southern Ocean.

Today, Maasdam brings me back to where we arrived in Australia, the container terminal in Fremantle.

And there - that little green indentation - is where I met my first Australian, a seagull, which disliked me and repeatedly swooped alarmingly close to my head. Fortunately, as it was dark, no-one saw me humiliatingly running for cover. And only his colleagues saw our pie-eyed engineering cadet use the same spot for a midnight dip. Perhaps by then the seagull was asleep.

Palliser Bay was a P&O Nedlloyd ship. She’s long been scrap and the British-Dutch line is history, but, testament to their durability, a few PONL containers live on ...

... as do Fremantle’s 1901 P&O Hotel …

… and 1903 P&O Building, previously owned by the Australian United Steamship Navigation Co., whose initials can be seen. The properties have been restored by a university.  

The 1907 ‘Hotel Cleopatra Hotel’, now student housing, was named after a vessel …

… but the Australia Hotel needs no explanation. The hotel serves Swan beer, named for the black swans on the river running through Fremantle …

…one of which you can see on this ancient advertisement.

A walk along the seafront reveals no swans but a solitary walker. I dip my shoe in the Indian Ocean …

… and then make a sentimental visit to a phone booth from my past. Well, its predecessor, no wifi then. 

Disembarking in Fremantle from Palliser Bay, I phoned my elderly mother in Toronto. In those days, we used prepaid phone cards rather than SIM cards and I found a public phone near the port. I stood here, yelling down the phone to Mum, who, by then, could occasionally be a little confused. ‘Mum,’ I shouted as a passerby grinned, ‘I’m in Australia!’ ‘Oh, that’s nice, dear,’ she said, completely unimpressed. A year later, Mum died. 

I wanted to go back, stand in the quiet square, thousands of kilometres from home, and think of Mum. 

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U.S. election today, but results tomorrow Australia time.