After travelling approximately 16,290 miles the time came when we had to leave Australia and head for Singapore. We had many good memories, not least of which was the friendliness of the Australian people, so it was with heavy hearts that we said farewell to that great country. We wanted to stay there!

On arriving in Singapore we remarked on how fresh it felt after the stifling heat and humidity of Darwin. The temperature was a mere 25°C!

Ensconced in a hotel some twenty minutes walk from the centre, we realised that so much building had been carried out since our last visit to this city state. The harbour had been enclosed and a huge triple building, the Singapore Casino, stood on the shore line, and more hotels had been built masking the tall Pan Pacific Hotel in which we had first stayed; also, the F1 race track had been constructed.

However, our goal was the casino, not to play roulette, but just to have a look, and, perhaps, go to the top.

Through the base of this enormous building was an arcade of shops and a large canal, with Venetian style bridges and gondolas floating on the water.

Outside we looked up and saw a boat-shaped platform on the top of the towers with what looked like palm trees, and people walking on the platform high above. Eventually we found ourselves in a foyer where we paid five dollars to ride in a high speed lift to the 56th floor and from there we walked up a flight of stairs to the Sky Park.

The building is not just a casino but houses a hotel with 2,561 rooms and the Sky Park, as it was aptly named, had real palm trees, bushes and gardens on its 1.5 acre expanse. It also had an ‘infinity’ swimming pool 478 feet long. The view was dizzying as we looked across the pool to the harbour some 627 feet below, where the water seemed to be on the very edge of the building. There was, however, a 12 foot gap from the pool to the edge of the building. The Sky Park is the world’s largest public cantilevered platform being about 1,122 feet long, 200 feet of which overhangs the North Tower. It seems that everything they build in Singapore is bigger or better than in the rest of the world!

After touring the main Sky Park (half of which is only open to hotel guests) we walked on to the overhang and looked down onto the harbour below and the high rise buildings of the city stretching hazily to the horizon. On the other side was the open sea, literally littered with ships of all sizes – although from this height, all of them seemed small. A friend had told me that at any one time there are about 800 ships within the Singapore area and we must have seen at least half of them!

This was the last of our many adventures and, by the time we got home, we had travelled some 23,000 miles in six weeks and had taken 1,200 photographs to keep the memories afloat.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

Following the Lyell Highway, in Tasmania, a drive of about 186 miles to Hobart took us past the turn off for the Russell Falls in the Mount Field National Park, where we drove through farmlands and vineyards.

On the last few miles of this detour we came across a hump in the road with a railway crossing sign. ‘Stop!’ It commanded. As there was no train in sight we bumped over a narrow gauge railway track and were rewarded by the unmistakeable sound of a police siren right behind us and red and blue lights flashing in the mirrors. As there was no other traffic on the road, I guessed the policeman wanted us to stop.

“Did I not stop at the crossing?” I asked as the policeman approached our car.

“Nah!” he said laconically. “There’s been no train on that line since 1990. Have you had a drink today?”

“Haven’t had a drink for about three days.”

“About the same as me, then. Where are you going?”

“Hobart.”

“Not on this road, you are not.”

I told him that we were going to see Russell Falls first.

“Okay,” he said. “Have a good day.”

That was my first encounter with the law in Australia.

The Russell Falls in the middle of the National Park was a fantastic sight even though, as the local people said, it was not going at full flow. The water cascaded like lace curtains into a large pool which foamed into the river and we could see, through the spray, white walls of water above and beyond. Accompanied by the roaring sound of falling water, we climbed up a long flight of wooden stairs through a forest, to Horseshoe Falls, and, breathless, saw the river tumbling over the first sheer drop on its way down.

Hobart, we found as we arrived at the city, is built on a gridded, one way system and can be quite confusing for a foreign driver. I stopped at a police station and asked for Bathurst Street where our hotel was situated.

“It’s right behind you. Turn right at the Shamrock pub.” There’s an Irish Pub in every town!

Our flight out was the next evening so we drove out of the city to the pretty little suburb of Richmond, which had the old jailhouse converted into a museum with some cells barely big enough for the two of us to squeeze inside. These cells had housed the female prisoners and it was all quite sad.

Away from the jail, set behind a shop, was a model of the city of Hobart in miniature, as it was in 1820, complete with river, buildings, small ships and various small models of people doing things, as they would have at the time. By now it was raining quite hard and the shopkeeper thoughtfully provided umbrellas for us to walk around the miniature city in relative dryness.

Then it was time to head to the airport and continue our nomadic tour, our next stop being Sydney, a mere 658 miles away.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

When I was about 17 years old, in 1957, I was on a ship named ‘British Adventure’ and we discharged our 28,000 tons of crude oil at the BP refinery port of Kwinana, some 10 miles from Fremantle. Then, we passed through real ‘bush’ country with spinifex, eucalyptus trees and red, sandy soil, where kookaburras laughed at us as we waited for the bus. During my seagoing career I called at this port many times, the last being in 1967.

Therefore, when staying at Mandurah, to have another look at Fremantle was a must and I had to see if anything had changed – particularly the hotel where, back then, they still had hitching rails like a wild west town!

As the Queen was attending the Commonwealth conference in Perth that day, all public transport was free so we hopped on a train. Now, the ‘bush’ is only a fraction of what it had been and small towns had spread along the route. We saw the ‘cat cracker’ and refining towers of Kwinana and passed through the old refinery town of Medina, where I had spent some time in my youth. Nothing looked the same.

Located at the mouth of the River Swan, Fremantle is the port that serves Perth, the state capital. Declared a city in 1929, it now has a population of about 25,000. The city was named after Captain Charles Howe Fremantle, who proclaimed possession of Western Australia. There are many well preserved 19th century buildings including, as in most Australian towns, the gaol.

A bus, built like an old fashioned tram, took us on a tour of the city, stopping at one point at the port itself. There was nothing there that I remembered and it appeared much bigger with some fairly large vessels moored alongside the dock. The replica of the sailing ship ‘Endeavour’ being ‘stored’ for a voyage was berthed nearby and later we saw her quietly sailing through the harbour entrance. The tour of the city took us to all places of interest and I was happy to see that the hotel with the hitching rails was still there in all its glory – but minus the rails!

After the ‘tram’ tour we explored the city on foot and were happy to see that most of the centre had been left as it was although we didn’t go to the gaol! Built in 1850, the gaol had been in continuous use until 1991. The Round House, on the shore line, was completed in 1831 and is the oldest public building in Western Australia.

A time ball and one o’clock gun were situated on top of the Round House and we arrived just before one o’clock to see the ball dropping and the cannon fired. This old tradition, which enabled the old sailing ships to set their clocks and correct their chronometers, has been carried on throughout the decades.

Fremantle is a lovely place and many memories were stirred, but as the Queen had by then gone home we went onwards to explore Perth.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

Leaving the beautiful island of Bali we looked forward to a three and half hour flight to Perth and soon were airborne and heading due south. The longitudes of Bali and Perth are almost the same, 115° 14’ East for Bali and 115° 42’ East for Perth, with latitudes 24° apart, a distance of approximately 1,448 nautical miles or about 1,665 statute miles.

During the original organisation of this epic voyage to Australia, the travel agent found all hotels in Perth were fully booked. The Commonwealth Conference was taking place with the Queen visiting on our second day. He had booked us into an apartment fondly named ‘Seashells’ at Mandurah, about an hour’s drive from Perth.

Mandurah has become, within little more than ten years, the second biggest city in Western Australia. Built on the Swan Coastal Plain which contains the Swan River, it was originally an isolated holiday community on the Peel Inlet. It has a Mediterranean climate and proved it when we were there, with brilliant blue skies and temperatures in the mid thirties. Our five day stopover in Bali had been a wonderful idea, ensuring we were acclimatised and well tanned for the Australian sun.

Our apartment was on the sixth floor with a large balcony overlooking a lagoon with apartment blocks, trees and shopping areas around its shore and, whilst exploring the town, we soon found that water played a significant part in the life of Mandurah.

The very friendly staff at the information centre told us of a cruise sailing later in the day which would give us a flavour of Mandurah. A walking tour was also recommended which was to start in half an hour from the centre. We stayed in the air-conditioned comfort of the centre until the tour took us out into the heat again, armed with the obligatory bottles of water, wide brimmed hats and, of course, cameras.

The tour took our small group to all the places of interest, including the original bridge that had spanned the inlet for a hundred years and we watched as a dolphin made a leisurely passage under the bridge.

Later, the cruise took us through canals where boats of all shapes and sizes were berthed alongside wonderful glass fronted, exotically gardened houses and out almost to the sea, where mangrove swamps covered the shore line which developers had not yet touched. A wonderful war memorial made from white pillars of varying heights graced parkland. Apparently, the pillars are sized so that on Anzac Day, 25th April, the sun rises at the eastern end of the memorial, traverses over the pillars and sets on the western end.

The next day we decided to visit Fremantle and found that, as the Queen was in town, all public transport for the day was free, an unexpected bonus. Fremantle was one of the ‘must see’ places for me as I had been there many times in my sea-going career.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.