Trip to Australia - ten pound tourist

10 pound tourists on a Greek Ship (Ellenis). Again don’t really remember much. Trip took about 3 weeks via Canary Islands, South Africa – Cape Town and then Fremantle, Australia. We arrived in late 1969 from memory.

I remember the Canary Islands because it was warm and I remember high rise buildings being built with Bamboo Scaffolding – boy those guys were brave (and no one had heard of Worksafe).

I remember Cape Town because of Table Top mountain and an old lady getting her bag ripped off in the main street and because we had to stay there for four days because 5 tugs could not pull the ship off the wharf due to strong southerly winds.

I remember the trip to Fremantle because it was very rough, especially out of Cape Town, and we were not allowed to go up on deck. The only other thing that really sticks in my mind was a fancy dress party on the boat where mum dressed me up as an elf (national elf – the English equivalent of medicare). I hate fancy dress – I am not sure if this had anything to do with it. Mum and dad made friends with people on the boat and some of these remained friends for life in Australia.

I remember arriving in Fremantle, at the Port, to be met by the parents of a man dad had worked with in the UK who owned a farm in a place called Cunderdin (about 200km from Perth) in the wheatbelt. Thinking about it now it was a major trip for them to come to meet us – they will certainly feature in later chapters of this story. I also remember dad’s brother, Ray, and wife, Pauline, meeting us. We all piled into a ute (light truck) and driving to Coogee (a place near Fremantle) to a caravan park.

On our arrival in Australia we were housed in Graylands Hostel – I don’t remember this - but we left after 2-3 days and moved into a crappy weatherboard house in Rossmoyne – Central Ave. Again don’t remember much about this house, but do remember dad blowing himself across the laundry plugging in an old copper. Plug disintegrated and he flew (like I did in the bathroom) across the room and there was one hell of a bang. Only other memory of this time was burning feet crossing a road in middle of summer. Black tar was melting the ground was so hot.

Mum and dad both got jobs and as soon as they could they moved to a new house in a new suburb which was being developed – Kelmscott. In early 1970s this was like moving to the edge of the earth. My early recollections of this place are driving into a town that had a train station, library – with a hairdresser next to it with the traditional hairdresser pole, a pub – all good towns had one, a service station and a foodland – small food shop. There probably was more there but I don’t really remember it. Essentially, the road went through it going to somewhere else. As it turns out it still does – in fact this place is now almost bypassed going to elsewhere.