The old fellow

One of our volunteers is a retired seaman. He certainly wouldn’t like me to say he was old, so perhaps I’d better just leave it at retired. Anyway, he’s seventy-four. He’d been on the ships for close on forty years before he retired about seven years ago. He’s as tough as an old boot and he still goes gold prospecting up in far north Queensland and out to the far west of New South Wales. And he’s a gold mine for amusing stories of when he was at sea.
The other night, a Korean captain arrives at the front door of the Mission, replete with a very modern bicycle, trouser clips and a cycle crash helmet. He wanted to know when we could go down to his ship and pick up some of his crew. We gave him the details and he cycled away.
This set our volunteer off about the days he was on ships and always had a bicycle for exploring the various ports that the ship visited. Some eighteen years ago, the ship he was on was berthed at Alyangula on Groot Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They were loading manganese ore, and in those days that took several days. Our seaman had been there before and knew of a grove of mangos. It was coming up towards Christmas so they would be about ripe. If you have ever tasted fresh ripe mangos you will know the lust our seaman felt towards them!
He off loads his bike from the ship and as he is doing this, one of the younger seaman, about nineteen, asks him where he is going. He says he’s going for a ride and he might pick up a mango or three. The young bloke says he’d like to go with him. Our “old bloke” (as the younger ones insist on calling him) says ok. So they unload a second bike and set off. Now our “old bloke” is the oldest member of the crew and the young fellows are starting to treat him as a bit “fragile”; “are you ok with that job ole fella?”, “are you sure you can lift that” and so on. Anyhow, the young fellow asks how far is it? The reply is “not far”. Now on Groot Island the roads are all bitumen (for the trucks) and the direction that our pair is heading is a series of long switch backs; and you could only see the top of the next rise. The temperature that day was in the 30’s and the humidity around 90%. After about four of the switch backs, the young bloke asks how many more. The old fellow says probably the next one will see them there. After three more the young bloke says, “ how about we sit under that tree for a bit”. Our old fellow says “Oh yeh, if you want.”. After about twenty minutes they carry on until about a further three switchbacks, the mangrove trees come into view. Our young bloke says, “ok, I’ll go up the tree and throw them down to you” So up the tree he goes, and starts to toss the mangos down. All of a sudden there’s a yell from the man up the tree and down he comes like there’s a tiger on his tail, and he’s scratching and rubbing himself all over. Our old fellow is killing himself with laughter. The poor young bloke had been attacked by a colony of green tree ants, each several millimeters long and they hang on! Anyway, they manage to get all the ants off the poor young bloke and they then attack the tree by shaking it and eventually gather what they want. They leave the tree and decide they need a beer. The old bloke says there is a pub round the other side of the golf course and they head along the road to the golf course. Again, our old fellow’s idea of round the corner is not quite what the young fellow had thought. They eventually arrive at the pub about an hour later and the poor young bloke is nearly dead! They left the pub an hour or so later, well “oiled” and get back to the ship towards evening, their bikes loaded down with mangos.
The young bloke says that he will never go out again with “that old …” again.! I gather there was considerably more respect for the “old fellow” after that, but they didn’t continue to offer to lift the heavy stuff anymore!

A Seafarers problem

I don't normally intend to use this blog to push any sort of political angle or to whinge in any way, but I feel that it might not be a bad idea to let people know the sort of conditions that the seaman have, sometimes, to put up with.

Most of the ships that come into our Port Kembla, are in port for a very few days, often as little as twenty four hours and generally not much longer than three to four days. Their time at sea between Australia and the west coast of the US is about 30 days, to Europe 40 days and Japan about 20 days. Their contracts on the ships is usually about nine months. Its not hard to understand therefore that the seafarers are pretty keen to get ashore. However, with the desire of our political masters to tighten up on security, it is making it progressively more and more difficult for seafarers to get ashore. Captains are grumbling about the vast increase in paper work, not least being the difficulties in getting special class visas, but all this takes second place to the need for increased security. I am not against a need for security. However, what I do perceive, at a grass roots level; for example, security officers at gates and junior security officials in remote offices, is the use of "security" as an excuse to make their life easier. What some of these people need to realise is that, in Australia, more than 90% of what comes in and goes out in terms of trade is carried by ship. Many Western countries are now finding that they have next to none of their own nationals on their merchant fleets. Generally this is because wage rates are too low to attract western crews. If you add this sort of obstructionism, on the part of the security industry, it will only make the situation worse.