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.

The Russian guitarist and the ex pat.

A few days ago I was sitting in the Seaman’s Mission lounge area with a group of seamen from a number of countries. There were Russian, Chinese, Burmese and Ukrainians. Some were playing table tennis, some were reading by the fire, and some were watching television (I sometimes wonder what a Chinese thinks of some of our soap operas, but that’s a subject for the future).




One of the Russians, picked up the acoustic guitar that sits, often neglected, in the corner. After a few moments of fiddling with the strings and re-tuning it, he started to play some Russian folk songs. Quite quickly the television sound was muted, after a further few minutes the table tennis players stopped playing. The two or three seaman around the fire put their newspapers aside and slid back comfortably into the seats. At least one of them (Chinese) closed his eyes and completely relaxed. The Russian continued playing. He had a good voice and he started singing some Russian folk love songs (or so he told us afterwards). After this he moved on to a couple of the Cossack dance tunes; they start very slowly and get faster and faster, ending with a tremendous crashing finale. No one in the room was involved in anything but listening to him.
He came from St. Petersburg; I asked him if he was homesick? He simply nodded.

This whole incident started me thinking about homesickness. As an ex patriot pom (Englishman in Australia) I have lived in Australia nearly forty years, and from time to time one goes through this experience. I think most ex pats do. I came to Australia when I was twenty six, with my wife and two very young children, so my formative years were English. I have spent far more of my life in Australia than I did in England, so one might have thought that English imprint would have been overlaid with an Australian one, but it hasn’t. It is strange how music often seems to trigger the emotions. I am not a particularly musical person, but that Russian music somehow triggered some thoughts of “home”. My sister, at Lucy’s blog http://boxelder.blogspot.com/ with her poetry references and family references has the same effect. In fact this is a very pleasant experience, but I have returned to England quite a number of times over the years and you realize that people, places and circumstances change. They move in one direction and you move in another. As I think Catalyst http://oddballobservations.blogspot.com/ said about his birthday, one of the nice things of getting older is that you have more friends. I understand what he means, and it’s very pleasant, but those friends don’t have the same connection to the ones you make in the first twenty years of your life. However, try to pick some of those friendships up after forty years and it doesn’t always work, even on the internet! Anyone who migrates to another culture, even if it is one with the same language, finds that it is a one way street. Some people only discover this when they return. If the time away has been short one can perhaps re-adjust but for any length of time it becomes progressively more difficult and sometimes painful. When I was regularly traveling between Australia and Europe, I used to think that I was perpetually living on an aircraft somewhere over India!
Coming back to our Russian guitarist seaman, I wonder if the job of seafaring has the same effect on these men. I suspect it does.
When the Russian had finished playing, all the seaman clapped and applauded him. They all felt the same about home.
As a final note, our Russian pointed out that the guitar had two broken string adjusting knobs. I said I knew this; he hesitated and then said “As its broken, I will give you A$20 for it. He said he had no guitar on the ship. As he had entertained us so wonderfully I felt the guitar would go to a good home; I said “Yours for US$20”. He said “Done”. After a few moments I asked him if he could fix the broken adjusting knobs. In a very proud voice (I had insulted him) he said “I am first engineer on ship, I can fix”. Another Russian who had witnessed the whole episode said “If he does not fix it and play well, the captain, a Pole, will toss the guitar and maybe the player overboard!” I am not sure that I had done Russian/Polish relations any good!

My sister's bunting.

Now that my dear sister (Box Elder) has ADSL connection, I thought it would be nice to hang some bunting out, as Lesley suggests. However, being novice at the in and outs of writing HTML for getting a picture into the "Comments" box, I have resorted to posting a bunting puzzle on my blog in the hope that she reads it. See if you can read it.







(If I am being stupid and there is a way to comment including pics, please let me know!)

To mark ANZAC day

Although not directly related to ANZAC Day, this incident for which I was honoured to speak at a remembrance service last year, seemed to me to be one of those times that we might remember at this time. (For the non-aussie reader, ANZAC DAY the 25th April, is the day we remember the Battles at Gallipoli in 1915.
If you are interested, have a look at: http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.htm)

(The above photo was taken by a US serviceman at the time. Unofficially as they weren't supposed to be carrying cameras.)
The place that this wreck occured is a few kilometers south along the coast from my home. Its a truly beautiful spot, sadly gradually filling with houses. Anyway, to the story.

Sixty three years ago this point was being battered by a huge storm that had been raging for several days. Over a metre or 40 inches of rain had fallen over the previous week. A 9000t US tanker the Cities Service Boston was off this point. She was in a convoy heading for Melbourne. Japanese submarines were believed to be in the area and she was close to the coast to minimize the risk of attack. However with the bad weather and very poor visibility, she ran on to the rock shelf just out from this point.

This happened at about 5.50am in the dark.
Its not hard to image the fear that those seamen would have been experiencing. As an aside, this coast has seen over 2000 ships lost in the last one hundred and fifty years or so with many lives lost. And that does not include the small fishing boats and recreational craft. Today, if you come down to this spot, you drive past new subdivisions on bitumen roads and it is taken for granted. However, back then this was a pretty bleak and lonely spot. Shellharbour, the nearest village, consisted of a few cottages and fishing shacks, a pub and not much more. Kiama was probably the nearest town but was still just a small fishing and quarry town. Dapto was the nearest centre of any consequence and that was where the nearest help could be found. It was where the No.6 Machine Gun Battalion was based and those men were called on for help. They were obviously under orders, but I don’t doubt that they didn’t grumble or argue. They would have given their all. They would have piled into their trucks and came down to this spot. Its not hard to picture. Sitting in those old Bedford trucks, canvas covered, and probably leaking. The roads here would have been full of pot holes and by the time they got here everyone would have been pretty wet. I’ll bet too that there was quite a bit of adrenalin flowing; they would have all been hyped up and ready to get into it. They arrived at about 8.30 am.

On the ship were 62 American seamen. No doubt they would have been going through a practiced routine, but if you have ever seen a big swell running down this coast, and the look of the jagged rocks off this point, the possibility of getting 62 men safely ashore would have been daunting. Attempts had been made to put a lifeboat into the water but it had been smashed to pieces. The site of those rescuers must have been very welcome. A line was made between the ship and the shore when two very courageous men of the Machine Gun Bt. swam out and picked up a line flung from the ship tied around a lifejacket. The actual conditions must have been appalling, and it doesn’t take much imagination to picture the chaos. A bosun’s chair was rigged and the seamen started to come ashore. Apparently waves were hitting the chair and sometimes the rescuers. Towards the end of the rescue, a huge wave broke right over the ship That was around 4.00pm near high tide. It took twelve of the men out. Most were pulled back. But it wasn’t the case for four of the rescuers. All 62 of the sailors were saved, but four men of No.6 Machine Gun Bt. all lost their lives in the surf that day.

These men gave up their lives in saving others.

There are many stories of this sort of heroism. Three come to mind. The story of the Cameron Highlander, who, as a prisoner of war on the Burma railway, died brutally because the Japanese commander thought, wrongly as it turned out, that tools were being bartered for food with local villagers. This man volunteered to die to save all his mates. There is the story of Simpson and his donkey at Gallipoli. As a stretcher bearer, he saved hundreds of men. A man who eventually gave his life to save others. The story of the Franciscan friar, Mychal Judge, who was a chaplain in the New York fire department on Sept 11, 2001 A man who gave no thought to his own life and went into the trade centre to try to help. He paid the ultimate price.
When someone lays down their life for someone else, he is carrying out the ultimate act of love. Anthropologists will tell you that successful societies are ones with a common purpose, ones where amongst other things, individuals care about their fellow man. This true story serves as a reminder to us, particularly in this age of “looking after number one”; that people can transcend the self centred world and live and sometimes die for others.

In the words of the Fransiscan friar, Mychal Judge:

Lord, take me where you want me to go;

Let me meet who you want me to meet;

Tell me what you want me to say

And keep me out of Your way.

The memorial that was erected by the surviving members of N0.6 Btn in 1968

The simple things of life

The inner harbour on a very quiet evening.

One of the things I find most rewarding in this job is meeting some of the seafarers from "less developed" countries. Last week we had a group from Papua Guinea come in. These men sign up for a nine or twelve month contract; away from family for the whole time. This particular ship was very small by comparison with most ships we see. It was a mere 4000 tons compared to the usual 80-90000 tons that come into the harbour. A total crew of 17, 15 New Guineans with a Fillipino captain and First Officer. They were loading steel pipes to take about 350kms up the Fly River in Papua; a total trip of 12 days from Port Kembla. Their stay in Port Kembla was a little above the average time; they were in Port for some seven days.

The first evening that they arrived at the Mission, they came in with smiles as wide as a cat that has just had the cream. The first thing they did was go straight to the second hand clothes rack. This is a rack of very good, clothes that one of our volunteer ladies keeps well stocked. She gets them from one of the Op Shops where they give her first pick! We sell these for $2 an item. This particular evening, these seamen bought thirty items, and a good proportion of it was being worn straight away! They played a little bit of table tennis and pool; they browsed through the second hand books and they had a couple of beers. They were a very relaxed group. At the end of the evening, they asked if myself and one of the volunteers would like to come to the ship next day and have lunch. We drove them back to the ship; they left as a very happy and contented group. It made me think a bit. They had enjoyed a very simple evening; they were simply glad to get off the ship for a few hours. We hadn't offered them anything "exiting " and I wondered how many of us would has been satisfied with this level of simplicity. They don't have much money, they are away from family for extended periods and the work can be dangerous, and yet often they come to us, a far more relaxed people than ourselves with all our high tech trappings. Don't get me wrong; I am not a romantic; we see our share of family problems, crewing problems and so on, but when you see a group like these Papuans it gives you a sense of hope.

As a final note. We had our meal on board; fish and chips, really nicely done. This was prepared by the cook, a 68 year old veteran who had been to sea all his life. He had seen every port in the Pacific and I reckon he intended to die at sea. A really interesting man.

A night to remember

The Mission to Seafarers is an Anglican organisation that has been in existance for over 150 years. Its charter says that is cares for the spiritual, physical and social welfare of seafarers and their families, no matter what colour class or creed, world wide. There are some 350 seamens' missions around the world, with some 23 around the coast in Australia. I have been doing this job as lay chaplain, here at Port Kembla, for the last 18 months. Prior to that I had been a volunteer here, for about three years. We have to run a very tight ship here with just myself as a paid person and the rest volunteers, but that makes to a great bunch of people.
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.