Right Royal Beautiful Boatload

Queen Mary I at Outer Harbour, Adelaide

We have one life to live and it’s the experience of each moment that matters. Curiosity; serendipity; Whatever words you wish to use; its that desire to find excitement and joy in every day which makes life a lovely adventure. Today, for instance. We are in the right place at the right time driving along the Semaphore foreshore planning to have coffee at the exotic Palais when there in the distance I spy a huge ocean liner. A ship this size in Adelaide is not an every day occurrence, or even every month. So plans are disrupted and we drive to Outer Harbour to find the largest liner in the world – the Queen Mary II – berthed at the wharf. People are jammed into the timber lookouts jutting out over the channel and perched on the rocks below. “She leaves in 15 minutes,” someone says. Here is a magnificent spectacle. The calm sea is azure blue under a cloudless sky, a few leisurecraft bob up and down in the sea, a police launch stands by, all adding to the atmosphere around this huge luxurious floating city. Smoke begins to pour from the bright red funnel and a yellow tug boat takes off towards the breakwater. Within a few minutes, the huge ship carefully eases itself away from the wharf. The decks of this magnificent leisure ship are lined with its thousands of passengers waving to the spectators and we all wave back joyfully. The police launch moves off and the ship gives three almighty hoots. Children scream and cry out. “The ship is saying ‘goodbye’ to us,” says one mother. Everyone with a camera is happily snapping photographs of the majestic liner. All too soon we are staring at its bow as it heads out to the gulf.

But wait! The spectacle is also the crowd now dispersing because here at Outer Harbour the colourful, multi-national face of who we are today as Australians is also on show. We have been nudging shoulders with hundreds of people, many of whom bear the genetic characteristics of other faraway countries. People from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, India and the swarthy features of Mediterranean countries are all distinguishable. Such an event serves to remind us that we Anglos, too, are a nation of boat people and while we did not arrive aboard the luxurious Queen Mary II, my forebears – both Germanic, Wendish and British – all arrived in boats to make Australia their new home. It springs to mind, too, that my late husband Olivier arrived in Sydney on board the PS Marconi with his French-born family 40 years ago next month. Then there were countless boatloads of Europeans on migrant ships post World War II and in the 1950’s there were many “10-pound Poms” many of whom had new houses waiting for them at Para Hills when their boats berthed right here. Everyone has a story of how they or their forebears arrived on our shores disembarking from boats. It makes such a colourful history as the Migration Museum on Kintore Avenue has so aptly captured.

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