My purpose with creating this blog is to tell some of the stories of things that have happened here and perhaps throw in a few thoughts in the process.
Some weeks ago we had one of our more adventurous nights. It all began like this.
It all started with the third engineer from this big bulk carrier. It is Monday night at the Mission in Port Kembla, Australia. In this part of the world, all the shops shut at 5.30pm. and this was a problem that the bulk carrier crew had. They were due to leave on Friday for Newcastle (Australia). Now Newcastle has some problems with a big bank up of ships waiting to enter the port and their ship was likely to be sitting at anchor for up to three weeks. The ship needed fruit and vegetables. For some reason, they wanted to purchase them through the fruit and vegetable shop, in the local supermarket. That was the reason that the third engineer approached us to try to arrange for him to stock up. Now the Mission in Port Kembla, at the present time, opens at 5.00pm until 10.00pm and the only late night shopping time is Thursday evening. I hasten to add that the reason for their wanting to purchase the food was not apparent to me at the time and I was under the impression that it was only a small amount that they wanted. (A problem of translation between English and Chinese!). We arranged to pick some of the crew up at the main gate in our Toyota Coaster 22 seat bus at 5.00pm and this is where we started to think that the situation might get out of hand! Nine crew awaited us at the gate! I asked if we really needed this number!. Oh yes, I was told! I should have known. Then it was to the Mission to change US$ to A$. How much? Oh, about US$1000. The plot thickened. We then take them to the supermarket and asked how long they wanted to stay. Not sure was the reply. OK so I lent the third engineer my mobile phone and told him
to ring the Mission when he was ready. I was starting to worry after two hours, when the phone rang. I very garbled conversation was carried out until a strong Australian voice comes on the line and says “No worries, mate, I’ll bring the food up and they can come up in a cab.” The phone went dead. Maybe half an hour or so later, a large table top utility arrives at the Mission, loaded about a meter and a half high with fruit and veg. The very Aussie son of the Italian fruit shop owner jumps out of the ute and says “That’s about half the load. I’ll go and get the rest!” I’m beginning to wonder how we were going to all this food plus nine seafarers and two of us, to the ship. Note that normally we can’t take the bus to the wharf at our port. The company runs a small shuttle service bus with nine seats! I thought maybe if I rung the security people they might bend the rules! And they did! Well, we loaded our bus, which left about two meters square for nine seamen, one volunteer and the bus driver, and headed for the main gate. The security man oked us through and my volunteer said “Oh, I know how to get to the wharf” (through a very large steel works with a maze of roads and railway lines. Needless to say, we got lost! Eventually by sheer providence we found the ship. This is now 11.00pm! The ship was a 170,000 ton bulk carrier which was nearly empty, so it was a LONG way up to the deck. Fortunately our resourceful third engineer was in full command and down comes a net from one of the cranes. We load nearly a tonne of fruit and veg into the net and everyone is very happy, not least the captain. It’s now about 11.15pm and we still had to negotiate our way out of the steel works. This was eventually accomplished and we put the bus to bed at about 11.40pm and got home around midnight after a night to remember.
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