Travel Tales
“By the time I’m 16 I will have been on one of those.”
I must have been eight years old at the time, and was sitting beside my Nanna, looking wistfully at the back page of an Australian travel magazine called ‘Walkabout’. The magazine arrived on our doorstep every month, and the first thing I always did was to sit down and drool over the picture on the back cover.
As far as I can remember, the P & O shipping line advertised on the back cover of every edition of ‘Walkabout’. The advertisement always included a photograph of one of their cruise liners and it was this photograph that captivated my imagination. It spoke of faraway places, of exciting adventures in foreign lands, of exploration and investigation of people and cultures yet unknown to me and of onboard luxury and fun.
In response to my rather matter of fact statement, my Nanna turned to me, smiled and nodded. “That’ll be lovely!” she said, then turned back to her knitting. She was affirming, yet reserved in her response. I guess she saw it as just one of those things children say out of their ignorance of reality - and I think she was probably right. I really had no idea of what I was saying. My statement was birthed more out of wishful thinking and yet deep down there was a real desire to get on a cruise ship and explore the world for myself.
My hankering for ocean going travel was fuelled by a television series I watched when I was about nine. It was called ‘Stina’s Diary’ and chronicled the adventures of a family of four as they sailed by cruise liner from Australia to Asia and Europe. For several months, this programme was the highlight of my week, though I was always a little disappointed if there wasn’t much footage of the cruise liner itself.
Then there was Mrs Hinchcliff’s round-the-world trip. It was the early 1960’s. People didn’t go overseas very much back then, so Mrs Hinchcliff’s impending world trip was the topic of conversation by many of the people in our church circles. She and her husband were sent off with a rousing farewell party and welcomed back six months later with about as much to do. They were heroes in my eyes. They had travelled the world, faced the unknown, and arrived back to tell the story.
A month or so after their return, our little church hall was packed with people, all waiting to share in the Hinchcliff’s trip via a marathon slide show. My excitement was amply rewarded when the first few slides showed glorious photos of the cruise ship on which they travelled to Europe. Some of the slides were of no interest to me, but others captivated me. They represented the mystery of worlds waiting to be explored.
At the age of 14, I would sometimes accompany my younger brother on the hour and a half train trip to Sydney where he attended the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for violin lessons. On arrival at Central Station, we had to take another train on a 10 minute journey that went through Circular Quay station. To me, this station almost had a magical quality, for from it you had a grand view over Sydney Cove with its bustling ferry traffic - and if I was lucky, a visiting ocean liner sitting at the nearby International Terminal.
One day, as we were nearing Circular Quay, the window beside me fell open. It was quite chilly, so I stood to close it. At the same time, I was anticipating our arrival at Circular Quay and so longed to see if there was a gleaming white ocean liner in dock. To close the window, I had to turn my back to Sydney Cove, so found myself struggling with an unaccommodating window latch, while turning my head so as not to miss a moment of my short opportunity to see a cruise liner should one be in.
As the train emerged from the underground, flooding daylight into the carriage, I watched in excited anticipation. Suddenly, there she was. Looking huge, and almost close enough to touch, sitting in all its gleaming glory was the ‘Canberra’. That ship was at the time, P & O’s biggest cruise liner. She looked so glorious, much better than any of the photographs on the back of the ‘Walkabout’ magazine.
I stood gazing at her, drinking in her beauty and her mystery, but was suddenly brought back to reality by a fellow passenger urging me to ‘get that window shut’. To do that, I had to turn away from the ship and focus my attention on the difficult window latch. By the time I turned back, the train was just re-entering the underground. I had wanted to feast my eyes on that ship for as long as possible, so felt that precious moments had been stolen from me. I sat down, closed my eyes and re-lived the splendour of what I had been able to drink in.
When I was 15, my older sister asked me if I would like to accompany her on a trip to the other side of Australia where we would visit relatives. We would go from Sydney to Perth by cruise liner and return by train. I nearly jumped out of my skin in excitement, only to have my hopes dashed a few weeks later, when my sister won the regional ‘Miss Australia’ competition and as a consequence had commitments that necessitated the cancelling of our trip.
My mother saw my disappointment and arrangements were soon made for me to make the trip with a friend. This became a bonus from my point of view, as my friend had relatives in Adelaide with whom we also holidayed.
So, at the age of 15 years, 11 months and about 10 days, I travelled to Sydney and boarded the “Galileo Galilei” for the week long voyage to the other side of Australia.
My matter of fact statement as an eight year old turned out to be ‘prophetic’. I had indeed travelled on a cruise ship before I had turned 16.
It was another 9 years before I experienced my first plane flight and from 1989, travel has been part of what our family does.
So this section of my blog will tell you some of our travel tales. You will read of some of our adventures, and see God’s faithfulness as He has directed our steps.