MY SEARCH FOR THE GREAT SOUTHLAND

m.v. Straat Johore” – Royal Interocean Lines – Sea trials 1957

After the stranding of the “Tjibantjet” in Hong Kong during typhoon “Gloria” on September 22^nd, 1957 I remained on the ship for a short period until the emergency situation was over. I then joined the rest of the officers who stayed ashore in the Melbourne Hotel in Kowloon.

I signed off on the 24^th of October and together with the Second Officer we flew home on a BOAC Britannia the next day.

I had requested Radio Holland to be returned to Holland and to be posted on a new RIL ship that had been launched at Boele’s Shipyard in Bolnes in July of that year.

The new ship was scheduled to go on the Australia - East Africa run, exactly what I wanted. For some time I had set my eyes on Australia, a country I had read and heard much about and wanting to see for myself. As far back as the 15^th Century it had been speculated that the fabled gold mines of King Solomon lay in unknown lands to the south of the Spice Islands known as the Great South Land. To me Australia was the modern day Great South Land, without King Solomon’s mines, but certainly a land of golden opportunities!

My request was granted and after a short leave period in Holland I signed on in Bolnes on the “Straat Johore” at the end of November 1957.

I still remember that grey, misty day in November when I drove to Bolnes to sign on in the Shipyard’s canteen and where I met my new shipmates for the first time. Right from the start I knew we had a good team and we did enjoy each other’s company right through. Even though I left the sea at the end of my 2-year contract on the “Straat Johore”, I kept in contact with these men and they are still my friends after all these years.

I am not superstitious and I ignore what other people may call a “bad omen”. But when this incident happened at the Shipyard in Bolnes I felt uneasy for a while.

A large river barge ran out of control and hit the “Straat Johore”. The skipper’s wife, who was at the wheel at the time, could not steady the steering wheel when it started spinning and as a result she got badly injured by the wheel spokes. It was an unfortunate accident and everyone felt sorry for her, so much so that people thought it had to be a bad omen for the ship.

There never was a “curse” on the ship or its crew and my time on the “Straat Johore” certainly was a happy one.

Sea trials were held between the 3^rd and the 5^th of December, the official hand-over took place on December 21^st and we sailed out of Rotterdam for Mombasa on December 26^th 1957.

Through the Strait of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal we sailed in ballast to our first port in East Africa, Mombasa. From there on to Dar Es Salaam, Lourenco Marques, Durban and Port Elizabeth where we loaded for Australian ports and made the crossing to Australia, Fremantle our first port of call.

My first impression of Australia was of a young boy with a bundle under his arm walking along the wharf in Fremantle shouting “Piper, Piper!!!” This was all very strange to me because the only piper I ever heard of was the Pied Piper! Surely they don’t have juvenile ratcatchers in Australia?

Then of course it became clear that the boy was selling Papers.

I got used to the Aussie slang, the way words are pronounced and the adjectives but not without some problems in translating from Dutch into English. One instance was a classic; my wife and I had been to a land auction and when we got home I explained to Mrs. Mac, our landlady at the time, that the circumcision of the block of land we looked at was some 450 feet. Mrs. Mac, a very prim and proper, old-fashioned lady, could not stop laughing and it took her some ten minutes before she could explain that the word for boundary is circumference, not circumcision! Fancy that, a 450 feet circumcision!

Children learn other languages very quickly and pick it up as they go.

When we lived with Mrs. Mac I did a lot of work around the house for her. Quite often her little grandson would be staying with his Nan and he would follow me like a little pup around the yard. This time I picked up an old, rusty petrol can full of kerosene when the handle came off and the can crashed onto the floor. I let fly in good old-fashioned Dutch - “G V D !!!” (A well established blasphemy in Holland) when I realised the little fellow stood right behind me and must have heard what I said. I did not worry me too much because he had only just started to talk, but I found out that there was nothing wrong with his memory or his foreign language ability.

That night we were all sitting at the dinner table when he looked me straight in the eye and said “G V D”, clear as a bell and with appropriate guttural sounds. I got a shock and kept very quiet but my wife, who had heard “G V D” before, looked disgusted and told me afterwards to watch my tongue in future.

Fashions for Australian men and women in 1958 were nothing like the European fashions that we were used to. Men wore baggy heavy woollen suits, hats and white shirts and women hats, long gloves, stockings and seersucker dresses, it all looked so old fashioned.

And there was the Gladstone bag, every household had one, its main purpose was to carry six 24 oz. (760 ml) bottles of beer to a party or BBQ, Eskies weren’t heard of then. It was such a ridiculous sight seeing men and woman dressed up to the hilt going to a ball or dance carrying their Gladstone bag with grog!

All shops were closed on Sundays, hotels had their “5 o’clock swill” when people after work rushed to the pub to get their schooners in before “Time Gentlemen” was called at 6 o’clock and the place closed for the night.

Women were not allowed in the Public bar and had to make themselves scarce in the Lounge bar, out of sight.

There were very few restaurants in Sydney, even fewer good ones. Plenty of cafes though where you could get a square meal served on a laminex covered table with the compulsory cup of tea or coffee before the meal, in other words nothing fancy.

The only good restaurants in Sydney that spring to mind was the Tulips restaurant in George Street and an other one, a tea room of which the name escapes me, opposite Wynyard Park.

What I have written so far are my first impressions of Australia, they are impressions, not demeaning comments because I fell in love with Australia from the first day we arrived in Fremantle. I liked the people, they were friendly, honest and frank, they made me feel welcome as a visitor in their country and later as a newcomer.

I made good friends with the people that sailed with us as passengers; they opened their homes to us and made us very welcome.

Being inside a country and travelling around for a while gives one plenty of chances to observe day-to-day life and find out what opportunities exist.

I certainly did that, I talked to many people and sought advice wherever I could and after a short time I was convinced that my Great South Land dream could become a reality. My future wife had similar ideas and when we became engaged we decided to make a new life in Australia together.

When the “Straat Johore” arrived in Fremantle on its maiden voyage Padre Coffey of the Mission to Seamen in Fremantle arranged a dance for the officers. He had invited a number of young ladies to come along to the dance and meet these Dutch officers.

On the afternoon of the dance the third mate and I had gone to the beach and to the pub afterwards. When we fronted up at the dance we were badly sunburned and with a few schooners under the belt we really did not look very presentable! This is where I met my future wife and to this day I still don’t know what she saw in me that day, but we got on very well on our first meeting and we made a date to go out for dinner the next night.

Things developed from there on and we made a date to go out again when the ship returned to Fremantle from the East coast.

In Sydney it was announced that the ship had been transferred to the Australia – India Service, the change made little difference to my plans because we would still be calling regularly into Fremantle on our way to Singapore, Malaya, Ceylon and India.

Before we arrived in Sydney I received a telegram from Radio Holland to be ready to change ship at short notice. I was unhappy, I wanted to stay on the Australia run and did not want to be transferred and could not understand why all this was happening.

Then I was told the reason; the original plan was to fly me back to Holland to receive a Royal decoration from Her Majesty Queen Juliana personally. Because of an official visit to the Netherlands by the Queen of England the event had to be cancelled and I would now be presented with the Royal decoration by the Netherlands Consul upon arrival in Melbourne.

On 25^th March 1958 in Melbourne the Netherlands Consul presented the Silver de Ruyter Medal to me, a decoration for meritorious service, exemplary devotion to duty and moral courage in very adverse circumstances during the grounding of m.s. “Tjibantjet” on September 22^nd 1957.

I am still very proud to have received this silver medal; to me it represents not only recognition of what I have done but also recognition of the work a radio officer does on board a ship.

RIL’s Australia – India Service ships started discharging and loading their cargo from and to the Far East in Brisbane. From Brisbane we would sail to Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, and Port Adelaide and leave Australia from Fremantle bound for Singapore, Malaya, Ceylon and Bombay. On the way back to Australia we would call into Cochin and then via Ceylon, Malaya, Indonesia back to Brisbane in Australia through Torres Strait and the Barrier Reef. Each round trip took 6 weeks, provided there were no strikes in the various ports.

My wife and I became engaged after my second visit to Fremantle. When the ship arrived back in Sydney from its first trip to India my fiancée came over from Perth and we went looking for a place for her to live. Our ship used to go to Cockatoo dry-dock for repairs and we spent more time unloading and loading in Sydney than in any of the other Australian ports, therefore it made sense for her to come and live in Sydney. We found a place in Bexley to live and that is where I settled when I came ashore in 1959.

The ship had accommodation for 12 passengers, the passengers were mainly Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force personnel and their families who had been posted to Singapore or to Butterworth in Malaya or returned to Australia after a tour of duty. We also had tourists who came for part of the trip with us and then embarked in Singapore on one of the larger RIL passenger ships to continue their journeys to either Japan or South America.

We made lots of friends amongst these people and had good times with them on board and ashore. Everyone was always very happy with the service on board and meeting some of these people years later they still recalled happy memories of their trip on the “Straat Johore”.

Not only was the service excellent also the meals for the passengers were very well prepared by Chinese cooks trained by Dutch Chef Instructors. The wine list was quite comprehensive with very good French wines but no Australian wines.

I made several day trips to the Barossa Valley and visited a number of wineries and I was impressed by what I saw and tasted.

Also I was surprised that the products of the Australian vineyards - very good quality wines - stood so well beside the French wines. Not only as good as, in many cases better than the French wines we had on board. In those days in Australia there was a stigma attached to wine drinking, possibly because it was very cheap to buy wine and the down and outs were drinking it. They were referred to as “plonkos” and when on one trip some of our passengers saw our supply of cases of white and red wine come on board in Port Adelaide they sniggered and called us “plonkos”! We challenged them and invited them to come and sample our wares and prove to them that our choice was cheaper and better than theirs.

We did prove our point, they helped us get through our stock and we started a new slogan - Drink Australian Wine, Support Your Country! -.

Australian wine consumption and export started to pick up after that trip.

Although we did not load Australian wines one other Australian product is worth mentioning - Sheep. After leaving Port Adelaide and before reaching Fremantle the chippy, the bosun and the crew were busy erecting pens on deck. These partitions are necessary to hold the deck cargo of sheep and wild goats that would come on board in Fremantle; separate pens for the sheep and the goats.

It was a funny sight seeing the Third Officer standing near the gangplank, clicking away on his sheep counter checking the sheep boarding. The sheep came on board without any problem but the goats fought every inch of the way!

Goats are strong willed and during the crossing between Fremantle and Singapore there were numerous fights between the males, escapes and even suicides. Some of these wild goats, when captured, apparently lose the will to live and die within a few days.

Sometimes at night on the bridge we watched the sheep and goats. The beam of light from a torch would reflect in their eyes and show up as green spots in the dark. As the ship rolled slightly on the long swell the sheep would move from side to side and all you could hear was this pitter - patter of their hooves on the deck.

If the sight of the Third Officer checking his deck passengers coming on board in Fremantle was funny, the disembarkation in Singapore was an anti-climax! Waiting on the wharf was one lonely ewe held on a piece of string by a local. As soon as the gangway was secured the ewe was led up the gangway and introductions took place between the ewe and the first available sheep on the ship. Then the local turned the ewe around and the whole lot followed her down the gangway to the pens ashore. Not a murmur out of the deck passengers!

Getting the goats ashore was a different matter, they fought all the way again!

Radio watches are maintained at sea only, in port the radio station is closed for telegram traffic and the Radio Officer does maintenance on the equipment and ancillaries and listens to unilateral transmissions from Scheveningen Radio - the Dutch home coastal radio station - at certain times. This leaves plenty of time to go ashore to do some sight seeing.

In many ports there was nothing of interest to see or not worth seeing a second time, in other ports there was plenty to do. One day in Melbourne the Chief Cook Instructor asked me to come to the races with him. He was an experienced old hand on the Australian coast and knew his way around, so I accepted his invitation. We went on the train, the racetrack was somewhere in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, and when we arrived he explained the betting to me. I did not know one end of a racehorse from another, let alone anything about favourites and the like so I just picked what a thought was an appropriate name - Sailor Boy -. He, or she, came in first and whatever bet it was I placed paid very well, so well in fact that Cookie and I lived like kings for a day!

That was the last time a horse ever did me a favour, nothing anymore, not even at the office Melbourne Cups sweeps.

Bombay was another place where we used to regularly visit the Breach Kandy Club swimming pool. It was British nationals only but we had an introduction from our local manager and were allowed in. There were plenty of young women around the pool, mainly wives of British servicemen or officials, who did not mind talking to us.

There was prohibition in Bombay but the club served beer and good sandwiches. You had to keep an eye on your plate all the time because there were crows all around you and these crows were highly trained dive bombers, in a flash they would snatch your favourite sandwich and disappear up a tree ready for the next attack.

One time in Colombo we spent three weeks in port waiting for a dock strike to end. There was plenty to see and we organised visits to Galle and Kandy, firstly on a bus tour and then once more with the Second Officer in a sporty, red Austin - Healy borrowed from the Agent.

We had a soccer team on board made up from members of the Chinese crew and the officers. Also held up in port were a number of British and Scandinavian ships with their own soccer teams and through the Mission to Seamen we organised games against these ships. Those were very successful events and always ended up having a few beers onboard the losers ship.

On Dutch ships we had short wave (HF) radio schedules at certain times and on different frequencies. We used these skeds to do a bit of gossiping and keep ourselves informed, it was also used to pass on urgent messages. Mieke, wife of Hans, the Second Officer was due to give birth in hospital in Hobart. We were on the high seas and out of reach of Hobart Radio but Casey my colleague on the “Straat Banka” was in Hobart at the time. We made arrangements to call on HF every four hours at the start of our watches and kept it going until the words “It’s a boy” came through the ether!

Casey and I still reckon that we spent more time on the birth of Hans’ son than what he did.

Before I left Sydney on my last voyage in June 1959 my wife and I got married in St. Philips Church, York Street in Sydney.

I knew that I had found the Great South Land and that my search was over. Now I wanted to lead a normal married life and come ashore, my wife also wanted to stay in Australia therefore our choice was easy.

Not so easy for my mother who felt that I should return to Holland to live with my wife and that marrying a “foreigner” was not a good idea. This may sound bad but one should look at the situation through the eyes of my mother. She knew what it was to be a “foreigner”, she was born in Germany and in Holland Germans were hated during and after the war, she actually experienced a culture difference that took her a while to get used to.

On board I got a more severe talking to by the Captain and the Chief Engineer who lectured me on the problems of marrying foreigners. I honestly believe that these two men had my best interest at heart, but I don’t think they understood my relationship and that in this day and age culture differences between the English and the Dutch no longer exist.

In the end it all worked out perfectly all right and the only cultural differences we now have is that my wife likes classical music and I don’t!

John Papenhuyzen

October 2005

NOTE:

The “De Ruyter” medal is the highest award in the nautical field and is in fact, a Royal Award established by Royal Decree dated March 23^rd, 1907 on the occasion of the commemoration of the birth of Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter, Lieutenant Admiral General of Holland and West Friesland, born at Flushing on March 24 th, 1607, “as a badge of honour for skippers, mates and other members of the crews of mercantile and fishing ships and other persons who have distinguished themselves through meritorious deeds for Netherlands Shipping”. The medal can be awarded in gold, silver and bronze.