Australia the Goal

There has been mention of ‘Kenanga Wholesale City’ before. We have been there again. With any luck this will be the last occasion that I am lured there.

Lunch was taken at a small stand inside on the third floor; this was followed by a rapid search for the... er... amenities. Not good.

Still, it gave time for thought. Plenty of time. The ladies of the house—two nieces, Mother-in-Law and Wife searched diligently for sundry items of bargain apparel while I went to the car and worked on the lap top.

I thought of Australia.

Don’t know why. It just sort of sprang to mind.

Some years ago a comedian called Lenny Henry was telling an interviewer on television that he had been to Australia. He said that it should have been called ‘Far’. Because it is so far away.

In 1999 I took a flight from Frankfurt to Singapore by ‘LuftHansa. The fellow next to me on the A340 was from Manchester; he was en route to Sydney. When we arrived in Singapore he got up, stretched and said, “Thank heavens. We’re nearly there.”

I was loath to tell him that he was only half way. ‘Leave him,’ I thought, ‘to his dream!’

This was travel in comparative luxury. Hundreds of years ago the prisoners were being taken out there by sailing ship. It is a wonder any survived the trip.

Shall we just think about this for a moment or two?

Transporting convicts to Australia took over four months. There were ships that could do it in less but these were expensive, high-speed ships called ‘Clippers’. They were reserved for valuable cargo; they took around two months.

Between a hundred and thirty to a hundred and forty days. On a sailing ship. This was no pleasure cruise. The boat would creak and groan all the time because it was made of wood. The wood made noises when it rubbed on itself while the ship was under way.

No steel nails, no bronze rivets and roves, these boats were held together with wooden pins.

The sails were the engines that transferred the power of the wind to the masts that acted as levers—dragging the boat through the water and trying to push the stem (front end) down into the waves.

The boat would pitch, heel, yaw, plunge and ascend. The stress on the planks was enormous.

They didn’t last long.

It was a wonder that, over a relatively short period of time, they managed to transport a hundred and eighty thousand convicts to the ‘New World’.

Four and a half months locked in with a crew that were rough, abusive and, largely, illiterate. The food started out bad and became worse; water that was barely drinkable.

Going from Britain to Australia they would follow the coast. They went around the Cape of Good Hope. At night the port side (left hand side) would catch the cool land breezes.

Coming back from Australia around the Cape it was the right hand side (starboard) that got the cool breezes—hence POSH (Port – outwards, Starboard – Homewards) because rich people could afford the more expensive cabins on the ‘cool’ side.

We complain about twenty-four hours to get to Australia. Think of eighteen weeks!

New Zealand doesn’t bear thinking about!

Imagine you’re a sailor and you are about to go to Australia. It will be nearly a year before you return to your loved ones again—if you ever do return.

Sailing on these long journeys was hazardous in the extreme. There was no guarantee of good weather—you were dependent upon the skills and experience of the Captain and his best men for their meteorological knowledge and experience. There were no coastguard helicopters to drag you out if you were in trouble and no fair maidens to help you sleep!

In modern times the equivalent of these people pushing out into vast unknown marine territories would be space.

Now we have technology to help us. Computers to assist in keeping us safe but... still...

Space is vast just as those ancient oceans were vast. Like space those oceans contained unknown terrors, unknown dangers.

We know, in spite of all our technology, very little of what is ‘out there’. The risks and hazards of going into space are huge. It will take brave people to undertake such journeys. Very brave people.

But there have always been brave people who will risk all to find things out, to explore, to seek adventure and fresh knowledge.

People who are brave enough to venture into ‘Kenanga Wholesale City’...