11 Apr On The Buxstar – from Sydney to Singapore
Sunday 5th May
My flight to Singapore to join MV Buxstar for a 5,000 mile voyage to Sydney via Jakarta, Freemantle, Adelaide and Melbourne arrives 6 am. Packing has been complicated. What will the weather be like in the Southern Ocean? Who cares, the Buxstar is a 40,000 DWT container vessel 269m long. Not a yacht. I will be in a suite so if it blows a gale I can go to bed.
Monday 6th May
Lunch with my brother Chris at a Thai restaurant on Boat Quay, a short walk from his very smart office at No1 Raffles Place. The restaurant is just past Harry’s Bar, very popular in the 90’s. Can’t drink beer like that anymore. Chris has been in Singapore for just over a year. We can feed the fish from our table by the river. In the 70’s this was an open drain crowded by bum boats servicing vessels anchored in the harbour. Old Mr Tay started Singapura United Tobacco Ltd thus. When he died in the late 90’s, SUTL was the largest company in Singapore not listed on the stock exchange. We all rise from the primordial soup one way or another.
Later in the afternoon Saeed K, this time with his driver, arrives at my hotel for tea. Last year Chris and I met him at the Tanglin Club on a Sunday. Saeed was driving himself and reversing from the car park afterwards scraped $25,000 worth of paint off his new BMW. Driving is expensive in Singapore. We talk old times. Who’s dead, who’s alive and who’s in between. One of the notables still alive and still working in his mid eighties is Bob Brown our old boss from RJBA days. Saeed and I had a lot of fun together in Singapore in the 70’s. Then one year he went off to visit his family in India and came back with the wife his mother had arranged for him. Later he became RJ Brown’s Singapore Boss and as a result the small branch office became head office.
The shipping agent’s driver collects me from the hotel and so the odyssey begins. No turning back. Will it be a 19 day bore nourished by gruesome mess mush or will it be an adventure?
We pass by the Seaman’s Club to pick up a Ukrainian engineer who has just flown in from Odessa to join the ship. Later on I learn that the entire crew of around 20 from steward to captain are independent contractors. By and large each has a 6 month contract from point of hire which is normally their home airport. Apart from the Ukrainian engineer the crew is Fillipino. Despite being an independent contractor, Captain Thaddeus Bonghanoy has been exclusively with NSB since he started as a steward 19 years ago.
Buxstar is manoeuvring alongside as we reach the berth. She is 269m long, 32m wide and fully loaded draws about 10.5m. Despite this, she is dwarfed by the towering cranes that shower her with containers as soon as she is secured. These cranes carry an array of floodlights that cast stark geometric patterns over the scene as the shore crew catch messenger lines and the deck crew deploys the gangway. She is empty and drawing just over 6m so the gangway is steep and a frightening prospect for one laden with two suitcases. Not to worry, within seconds a crewman has the large one on his shoulder and is showing me to my home for the next 19 days.
Tuesday 7th May
Fried eggs and garlic luncheon meat for breakfast. Testing. I will need US$ for my Indonesian visa so decide to go into Singapore to find a money changer. Escaping from the port area is not easy, especially dealing with the surly PSA bus drivers within the customs zone so I abandon plans to have dinner with Chris.
Wednesday 8th May
By 1pm the PSA has loaded 1,888 containers aboard Buxstar in 41 hours. She is now drawing just over 10m and the gangplank is easier to climb. To the unpractised eye the operation is impressive and demonstrates just how clever the container system is and how it has streamlined the general cargo industry. Most interesting for me are the portable hatch covers which are taken off the vessel and later replaced by the container cranes to facilitate the loading and or unloading of a single bay of below deck containers without disturbing adjacent bays. Other clever details are the “twist lock” and lashing systems that secure above deck containers which can be stowed up to 7 high. Then there is the associated software which, as far as I can tell, uses the weight and location of each container to prepare a ballast plan for the ship.
At 2pm the pilot boards, a small man with a large haversack. He exchanges short pleasantries with the Captain, reads the vessel data sheet which has been specifically prepared for this departure, checks the tug is in place to assist and signals “cast off”. We are away. The pilot pulls an iPad from his haversack and I notice it has a navigation “ap” which shows our position on the appropriate chart at any scale.
We leave the berth and head south leaving Shell’s Pulau Bukom Refinery to the west. Refineries in Australia are closing. It’s a wonder they have survived this long now that Australian unions can do what they like. Lemmings to the precipice unite. Anyway its likely Pulau Bukom will be supplying much of Australia’s gasoline in the future.
Just to the south of the refinery there is a crane barge working on the tanker mooring buoy (SBM) installed in 1974. The pilot tells me its still in use. I was part of the RJBA team seconded to Shell to supervise the installation of the 48” diameter pipeline from the SBM to the refinery. It was an interesting project and we had a good team doing it. This SBM would load the largest tankers from the Persian Gulf in less than 72 hours and put Singapore firmly at the centre of refining in SE Asia.
A 48” submarine pipeline needs a 6” concrete coating to make it sink Figure 4 SBM and Moored Tanker during construction. As a result it is stiff and careful seabed profile dredging is needed prior to installation to avoid pipeline spans and buckles afterwards. I was particularly proud of a computer programme I developed to determine that profile. That was early days for computers. We had to go to the university to run the programme.
Despite these high tech tools our progress surveys showed a persistent high spot on the profile that the grab dredger we were using had failed to move and the arrival date for the pipeline installation barge threatened. It was decided explosives were the only answer but obtaining a permit from the Singaporean Authorities was difficult in those days of “Confrontation” between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. If anybody could do it Shell could and, of course, this was economically important for Singapore so, with only a few days to spare we received the permit and procured the necessary gelignite. We ran a survey to ensure it was placed correctly. Dredging had continued as the permit application progressed. And the hillock was gone. The profile was perfect. Embarrassing. We took the explosives of to the side and let them off anyway. And almost swamped our diving tender as the detonator leads weren’t long enough. Certainly the largest firecracker ever let off in Singapore.
Our pilot leaves us just to the south of the refinery and we head for the Singapore Straits in company with two other vessels. The traffic volume is substantial as we enter one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and head east with Bataam on our right. Having passed Pulau Bintan to the north we turn south and head for the Java Sea.
Thursday 9th May
Thursday 9th May
In the early morning we cross the equator which crosses the east coast of Borneo just to the south of Bontang. This was a tiny fishing village when I went there in 1973 with a reconnaissance survey team looking for a site for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant to process gas from the Badak Field about 100km to the south in the Mahakam Delta.
Our main survey vessel, the “Garuda Mariner” – grander in name than nature, was a rusty old landing craft which also provided our primitive accommodation. The mess was no better and could explain why, on the second or third day out, our party chief, a portly American, went down with diarrhoea. Of course, Garuda
Mariner’s WC was a squatter and there was no way Joe could use it so he went back to Singapore leaving me in charge. A moment in destiny. We found a suitable site and years later Bontang became the largest LNG plant in the world.
By late morning we are in Selat Gelasa with Bangka to the west. Suharto, who was Indonesia’s president from 1960 to 1997 incarcerated many of his political opponents there. The worm turned after his overthrow when Bob Hasan one of his closest friends was imprisoned there for corruption.
The Java Sea is glassy as usual. Buxstar is making 17 knots and there is no sense of movement. Because Selat Gelasa is so narrow we pass close by a tiny island settlement and receive a phone signal. Its nice to see remote island villages in Indonesia are sharing the benefits of modern technology. I arrange lunch for tomorrow in Jakarta with my old friend Leon K.
Friday 10th May
The steward knocks at 6am. We are alongside Tanjung Priok. Captain Cook was here in 1770 to repair Endeavour after her brush with the Great Barrier Reef. Cook had been away in for 2 years without losing a single casualty until he arrived in Batavia where 30 of his crew died from dysentery and malaria.
The agent needs my passport and US$30 to arrange a visa. He will be back at 9am. Leon sends a text suggesting we meet at Cafe Batavia. This is a great idea and I would love a beer there but have an uneasy feeling the visa will take longer. It eventually arrives at 11.30. Then there is the chaos outside the port gate. Wall to wall container trucks in both directions going nowhere. Hullo Jakarta. Nothing’s changed.
The elevated toll road is being extended into the container port. When it’s finished it will be great but right now its not. Normally a team of oxen could not get me onto an “ojek” (Indonesian motor cycle taxi) but desperate measures for desperate times. The ojek who offers his services swears he will go slowly. For the next 15 minutes we thread our way across potholes between lines of container trucks barely a metre apart. I hold on to the drivers’ shoulders and when the grip tightens he laughs and slows down. First of all he takes me to the money changers, two young girls wreathed in smiles and hijabs, then off to the nearest ramp up to the toll road where I catch a taxi. I eventually meet Leon at Rumah Makan Sedehara in Ampera Raya at 1.30pm. Leon knows I love Nasi Padang and as far as I can tell it’s just as good as it ever was.
After lunch we go to inspect Leon’s pride and joy, his new 600m2 mansion in Jalan Benda. Well, it would be his pride and joy if he wasn’t so keen to leave Indonesia. Its the traffic and he is also sensing work is no longer so easy to come by for “Bulehs”. I thought the traffic was unbearable 10 years ago. Apparently there are another 10 million motor cycles now.
There is still just enough time to visit Peter C who is close by and preparing for one of his famous parties later in the evening. I must be back on board by 8pm and suspect getting back to TJP during rush hour may be even more difficult than the noon time trip into town but there is still time for a beer or two. Peter is clearly in his element back in Jakarta and he has a superb traditional style house which he shares with his old Oceaneering colleague Fred K. Fred is now with Fugro.
They arrange a Silver Bird Taxi to take me back to the port. It takes two hours. No wonder Leon wants to leave.
Saturday 11th May
Our first full day at sea. I am on deck just before sunrise as we head north from Jakarta to avoid the old Maxus oilfields. I think of my old friend Peter Ikert who kept these marginal fields profitable with his “agricultural” engineering. What he meant was, no silly consultants, no gold plating, no waste. Pete and I first met
in Saudi Arabia in 1975 when he was with Aramco’s project management department. They didn’t go for gold plating despite being the richest company in the world. Gold plating and waste was invented in the North Sea in the 80’s. It’s now been taken to a higher level in Australia where projects are no longer viable.
By 9 o’clock we have passed round Bima Zu Oilfield and the Cinta Terminal and are heading south for the Sunda Straits narrow neck between Merak, West Java and Bakahuni, South Sumatra. In 1992, having spent the last of my money on fox hunters and having a good time in Leicestershire I went back to work in Jakarta building a new pipeline from the Badak Gas Field in the Mahakam Delta to the LNG Plant at Bontang. Given my earlier exploits in Bontang this was an interesting twist of fate. Anyway, not long after having established the project office in Jakarta the project manager resigned and I replaced him. The critical line pipe (the 40’ long lengths of pipe welded together to form a pipeline) supply contract was awarded to the Krakatau Steel Pipe Mill in Merak and since it was such an important element of the project I visited the plant often. In those days the round trip took a day. I can’t imagine how long it would take in today’s traffic.
Talking about Krakatau, at about 11.15am we pass 11 miles to the east of Anak (baby) Krakatau. This is a new volcano emerging from the ruins of the old Krakatau that blew sky high in 1870. In 1996 my sister and her husband came to Jakarta and we chartered a small yacht and sailed from Tanjung Priok around to Anak Krakatau and back. It was fuming then and still is. But now it looks bigger. And it is.
Buxstar’s Admiralty Chart for the Figure 7 Anak Krakatau
area, Selat Sunda, issued 1991 puts
Anak Krakatau at 125m and the next door island, Pulau Rakata Kecil, at 132m. Now Anak Krakatau is around 40% higher than its neighbour, say 180m. This implies a growth rate of 3m a year. At this rate it will be the same height as Daddy in 2230. Watch this space.
Saturday night is bingo and karaoke night in the crew mess and the captain encourages all to join in. At the height of the bingo the only members of the crew missing as far as I could tell were the Chief Officer who was driving and the Chief Engineer.
Sunday 12th May
On deck again for sunrise slightly hung-over from the Captain’s wine. We are now 11o South on a bearing 162o for Freemantle. Christmas Island is behind us to the right. Where are the waves of refugee boats? There is nothing out here. Daunting enough in a 40,000 tonne behemoth confidently crashing through the swell at 16 knots. Goodness knows how it would be for a family struggling for space in an open boat bobbing about with an Indonesian helmsman they can’t understand. The 30 knot wind from the SE combined with a 2 to 3 metre swell has reduced our speed to 16 knots so our ETA has gone back 3 hours to 15/5 1800. The crew tell me it’s always like this out here. I doubt the people smugglers mention this on their web sites.
The captain is helping the deck crew to install gratings between the container bays to be unloaded in Freemantle. These to cover the gap formed between the hatch covers that support the deck cargo. The gap is about 700mm wide and less than a metre deep. Recently Buxstar suffered a 4 day delay when stevedores in Freemantle refused to unload without the gratings in place. There was no problem without them in Singapore and Jakarta. So Australian unions continue to work themselves out of jobs. Lemmings to the precipice unite. Apparently the container port in Brisbane is bringing in automation. What a surprise.
At about 11am the radar detects a northbound vessel to the west and barely visible on the horizon. She is a bulk carrier with wheat loaded in Sydney for Jakarta. Perhaps soon to be Indo Mie. My father, a grain trader, would have been interested. He pioneered the use of containers for shipping grain. But these were higher value parcels such as bird and grass seeds. The captain of the bulk carrier is also Pilipino. The international maritime brotherhood. The captains “shoot the breeze” over the radio. The bulker has just been struggling through a 6m swell in the Bass Strait. Oh dear.
Just before lunch we have a fire drill. Following the general alarm and announcement we must report to the mustering area on the third deck with our full immersion suit, life jacket and hard hat. The second officer emphasises the importance of this particular drill since 10 new crew who may be unfamiliar with Buxstar have just signed on in Singapore. I’m impressed with the Captain and crew’s dedication to these drills.
Monday 13th May
There is no sunrise this morning, it is overcast, lumpy and blowing 30 knots from the south so we are not making the 17knots we are accustomed to, somewhat below 16. There is patchy rain as well so work on deck erecting the grating platforms is nigh impossible since there is welding involved. Nevertheless we are now at 17oS and since the swell is more or less on the nose the motion is tolerable and it’s still possible to take my customary walk from stem to stern and back without getting too wet.
After lunch my fellow passenger Tom and I are taken on a tour of the engine room. Room is the wrong term. The 32MW main engine and its ancillaries; boiler, generators (4MW), desalination plant, lube oil recycling plant, incinerator, sewerage plant, bilge and trim pumps and spares occupy virtually the entire space below deck and aft of the accommodation. It’s deafeningly noisy, hot (sometimes 50oC) and thick with engine fumes. Despite this seven men work there seven days a week and wouldn’t take a deck job if you paid them. And with a regular supply of spares, they keep the 8 cylinder engine running at 76rpm 24 hours a day.
The biggest spares are the spare piston and piston rod. Together they weigh 5 tonnes. If necessary, the engine room crew can install them during a normal stop in port without external assistance. A week later they did just that in Melbourne.
Tuesday 14th May
The weather has improved and with it our speed. Just before 10am we cross the Tropic of Capricorn and certainly its been a very comfortable temperature overnight. Looking at our progress on the chart I note that just before the dawn we passed to the east of the iron ore port of Dampier. In 1970 as a first year graduate civil engineer working for the Westminster Dredging Company I was involved in, with hindsight, an amusing incident.
Westminster was dredging in the entrance to the bulk loading terminal using a 1,600m3 trailer suction dredger, WDA Endeavour. A trailer suction dredger is and looks like a small ship except it has a dredging suction pipe on one or both sides. When dredging, it steams at about 3 knots in a prepared pattern in the dredging area with the lower end of the dredging pipe scraping along the seabed. The dredged spoil is pumped into its hull and when full to
capacity it lifts its pipe, steams out to sea, opens doors in the hull and dumps the spoil. Then it repeats the cycle.
The dredging pump is always positively primed because the dredging pipe passes through the hull below the waterline. But since dredger pump maintenance is a regular necessity a gate valve is installed upstream of the pump. This valve is normally closed when the pump is not in use.
The Endeavour worked six 12 hour day and five 12 hour night shifts a week with Sunday a maintenance day. Saturday night was BBQ or pub night. On Monday mornings the night shift from the previous Friday started as the day shift. During dredging, most of the wear and tear is sustained by the teeth on the bottom of the trailer suction pipe and the main pump impeller so on Sundays these were the main items on the agenda. Impeller life is prolonged by “hard facing”. This involves laying beads of hard steel over the mild steel impeller blades using a simple welding technique and special welding rods. Access to the pump impeller is via a hinged access cover in the pump casing secured by ring bolts.
On the particular Sunday morning in December I was out, as usual, on the survey vessel running a progress survey over the dredging area. This was a tedious task made even worse by a hangover in 40oC. The SOS came mid morning. “Bring the launch alongside immediately”. I was happy to abandon the survey and headed off towards Endeavour which I was surprised to see was under way rather than at anchor. As the gap closed I was even more surprised to see the ships dinghy towing in its wake with a man at the bow with a cleaver in his hand. By this time Endeavour was at full tilt heading for the beach about a mile away. I tried to manoeuvre alongside but the Superintendent waved me off and over the radio explained what was happening.
As usual first thing Sunday, the welder had gone down to the pump room to hard face the impeller. He loosened the ring bolts on the pump casing access cover and, as usual, water pouring out. It always did as there was always water in the pump even when the gate valve to the sea was closed. But that Sunday it wasn’t. The pump operator in his excitement about going on leave at the end of the Saturday shift hadn’t closed it. The welder hammered the ring bolts free. By the time he realized what was happening it was too late. He couldn’t shut the access hatch but managed to close the pump room compartment door as he escaped. This isolated the main ship engines but flooded the electric operator on the gate valve. By the time he had raised the alarm attempting to close the gate valve from the bridge might have blacked out the entire ship so the captain decided to beach it and did. The man in the dinghy was the cook. In the panic he jumped into the dinghy taking a cleaver with him to cut the towline just in case.
As soon as Endeavour was aground they tried closing the gate valve and it worked. It made it easier to pump the water out and refloat her but the repairs took months. I was sent back to Sydney. Hardly disappointed. Dampier is no place to be in the cyclone season.
By evening the sky is clear and we have our first uninterrupted sunset. And, sure enough, there is a bright green flash just as it sinks below the horizon. During the day I have calculated that, from the Buxtar’s bridge which is about 25m above sea level, the horizon is 9.6 nautical miles away. This is confirmed not long after when we spot the bridge of a similar sized vessel travelling north about 20 miles away on the radar.
Tonight there is no moon and the sky is spectacular. The Southern Cross is overhead and, as ever, showing the way south. Could this be why it features so prominently in the Australian Flag? To the convicts and early settlers sailing into the unknown it may have the only reliable point of reference. The Milky Way is a distinct plume stretching across the sky from East to West. I don’t recall ever having seen so many bright stars so close to the horizon.
Wednesday 15th May
The Chief Mate’s first shift of the day is 4 to 8pm so he is normally on the bridge when I make my first visit in the mornings. The weather is improving so we are making up the time lost on Monday. I photograph the sunrise.
We spot the coast just to the north of Perth at around 4pm. We are ahead of our schedule to pick up the pilot at 9pm so the Captain reduces speed. Despite our proximity to the coast there is still no sign of marine life. From Sunda to Rottnest a few flying fish, perhaps two manta rays and little else. There is a lot of water in the Indian Ocean and its about 6km deep.
Apart from the lighthouse on Rottnest Island the first signs of Perth are the office towers on St Georges Terrace which rise from the sea as we approach. When we are about 15miles out I realise I’m not receiving any phone signal because my settings are wrong. I ring my Perth friends and arrange to meet for lunch tomorrow. It will have to be snappy as we are scheduled for a 4pm departure.
Thursday 16th May
The sun rises over Freemantle Port at 7am. We are alongside and cargo operations have commenced. At about 8.30am the Chief Mate shows two customs officers to my cabin. They are far more inquisitive than the usual airport procedure and top of their list is checking my computer for child pornography. Later, my fellow passenger, Tom, who is signing off today to catch the train to Melbourne remarked it was the most intensive quizzing he had received so far on his trip from England via, Russia, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore. The good news, however, is I have now “entered” Australia officially and won’t have to endure it again.
Despite the downturn Perth is still a bustling place. My first stop ashore is the Cottesloe Library to send an email. Then I walk through the Boatshed Market which must be the largest deli in the world and join Annie S for coffee. The Buxstar doesn’t sport a coffee percolator and I don’t care but I enjoy the milieu in this lively precinct.
Annie drives me into town to make sure I find her husband who I am meeting for lunch. The Captain calls to say our departure has been delayed so it can be more relaxed. We meet at The Trustee in St Georges Terrace which is surely popular. Rodney is working for Apache evaluating an offshore development involving subsea storage. Clearly floating storage is unpopular these days. I didn’t ask him about the other parts of the development but if there is to be a platform it will almost certainly be unmanned. Anything to avoid employing people in Australia. In that vein the conversation moves onto Olympic Dam and Browse that have been shelved for “economic” reasons and even the Government’s pet project, the National Broadband Network that has been delayed for “economic” reasons.
On my return to the ship I find our departure has been delayed to 9pm. The stevedore’s tea break from 6.45 to 7.30pm doesn’t help. When will these people learn? Reductio ad absurdum; why not aim to do nothing for a large wage? Anyway the loading is completed by 9pm and the pilot turns up with two tugs. The Captain is not happy.
Buxstar has perfectly good bow thrusters and can leave safely in the prevailing onshore wind. It’s not difficult to see that the pilot quietly agrees but insists it’s a directive from the harbour master who ordered the second tug earlier when the wind was gusting 40 knots. The captain is forced to agree or suffer a delay while everybody is called into the argument.
As we leave the harbour we receive news another pilot has narrowly escaped going over the side while boarding another ship.
Friday 17th May
West of Busselton and good phone reception so I am able to read the new papers and emails. The wind is freshening from the SW but the ships motion is comfortable as our course progresses from SE to easterly. Despite my expectations the wind speed drops away toward afternoon. Perhaps its not going to be an exciting trip across the Great Australian Bight after all.
Saturday 18th May
SE of Albany heading east. The wind is still light and behind us so we are making 17 knots and more. We should be in Adelaide well ahead of schedule.
Sunday 19th June
South of Eucla. I am listening to Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 2. I had forgotten how beautiful it is. This recording was a present from a guest who came to stay when I lived in London’s Holland Park in the early 80’s. Tempus fugit.
This morning I am on the bridge in time to see the sunset. The Chief Mate is on watch as usual and our chatter meanders to computers. The Chief had asked what prompted my departure from Australia. In short it was a job offer from RJBA in Singapore in 1973 but shortly before that I had been charged with dangerous driving following an accident in which I wrecked my motorcycle and the car I hit. So making the decision to go to Singapore was easy. And since there were few, if any, computerised police records in those days the dangerous driving charge was eventually forgotten.
The first “personal computer” I ever had was the programmable hand calculator launched by Hewlett Packard around 1974. This was nothing compared to what we have now but compared to the slide rules we had at university and the simple calculator we had shortly thereafter it was a giant step forward. In a relatively short time this HP 41 was churning out calculations in minutes that before had taken days.
As far as I was concerned the next big step forward was in about 1982 when my company in London, Bligh Engineering, bought two Rank Xerox word processors. These were about the size of a typewriter and introduced the concept of an electronic document which was relatively easy to edit (compared with a type written document that often needed to be completely retyped following editing). More than that, we learned how to transmit the electronic document over the phone and I remember the first day we sent a document from London to Houston. Of course, the recipient in Houston had to have the same word processor.
I had my first desk top computer in 1984. I think at that time we might have had 3 in an office of 50 or so people. Despite this, it was some time before we gave up on our HP 41s. Eventually as Excel and Word became the common languages computer assisted productivity improved in engineering. Then in the early 90s we got computer aided design and that really got things moving. On the down side there emerged the problem of young engineers doing nothing but stare at computers all day.
I moved back to Jakarta to set up a new engineering company in 1995. We won our first significant contract early in 96 and took the “big” decision to connect to the internet so we could send and receive emails. Everybody knows the rest.
The internet was installed on Buxstar just a year ago for emailing. Just as in 1996 I couldn’t see what the internet would do for engineering I can’t see what it would do for shipping but apart from making crew life better there would probably be significant gains in other areas such as general maintenance, engine room operations and spares inventories. The industry is suffering at the moment and this is likely to go on for a few years so there couldn’t be a better time to take advantage of the improvements that can be made with the internet.
Monday 20th May
I make the bridge at 5am as we turn into the Gulf of St Vincent for the run into Adelaide. As dawn breaks the 100MW wind farm at Wattle Bay on the Yorke Peninsula looms in stark relief and the blades are turning in the gentlest of morning breezes.
I think about my last trip to Adelaide in 2000. We were tendering for a field development project on Seram, one of the larger islands in the east of the Indonesian Archipeligo. The crude oil Figure 10 Wattle Bay Wind Farm produced there is extremely heavy and needs refining before shipment. We teamed up with specialist engineers from Melbourne for this aspect of the project so I flew there to meet them and visit a similar plant they had designed at the Port Bonython Refinery at the northern end of the Spencer Gulf.
Following our meetings in Melbourne three of us flew to Adelaide to catch the Whyalla Airlines flight to Whyalla that evening. We would rent a car and drive up to Port Bonython the next day. Having arrived in the Qantas terminal in Adelaide we had instructions to locate a special “Whyalla Airlines” phone via which we could request a bus to their departure lounge. Minutes later a young man turned up in a station wagon and drove us to the general aviation terminal. He showed us into the lounge and having unloaded our luggage reappeared behind the desk , checked our tickets, directed us to the plane, loaded our luggage, closed the door, climbed into the pilots seat and flew us to Whyalla.
The plane was a twin engine Piper Chieftain. A month or so later, doing the same flight, it plunged into the Spencer Gulf killing all 7 passengers and that young man who was at the helm. Pilot error we were told. So what a relief it must have been for his family when some time later the wreckage was located and the engines were recovered and it was conclusively shown the accident was caused by manufacturing defects in the engine. That young pilot had done everything in his power to save his passengers in the dark on that moonless night.
There were no ships anything like the size of Buxstar when the Adelaide’s Outer Port was built so watching the Pilot, Crew and tugs bring her confidently and professionally down the narrow approach channel and turn her 40,000 tonnes in the basin to bring her to a perfect stop alongside is one of the experiences that has made this trip so worthwhile. Within minutes the gangway is deployed and I am off to the SA Art Gallery. I don’t say its a well kept secret but there is no better collection of 19th century Australian artists. Later I join old friends from Singapore days, Gerald and Louise L for dinner. Its been more than 10 years since I saw them last so there is much catching up to do.
As Gerald drives me back to the Port we pass Figure 11 The SA Art Gallery
a sign to “Techport”. I scoff at this crass buzzword and Gerald explains this is where substandard submarines are built for the Australian Navy at 3 times the price of a proper submarine built in Spain. It may even waste more money than the NBN. The saddest part is that even with a new Liberal Government, the NBN and Techport will survive.
Tuesday 21st May
Mid morning and we are well to the east of Kangaroo Island very much in touch with the featureless coastline apart from the odd windmill and Mount Gambier.
Wednesday 22nd May
By the time I reach the bridge around 6am the pilot is on board and we are in Port Philip Bay hugging the coastline just to the north of Portsea. The pilot tells me he was up at 3am in order to make the rendezvous on time.
We are another 3 hours crossing the bay and as we enter the port area we pass the latest addition to the Australian Navy, “Canberra” currently being fitted out. It will be a helicopter carrier. Nevertheless it has been built with a launch ramp over the bow. Yet another Defence Procurement cock up.
The approach to the East Swanson Dock makes Adelaide look easy but, as usual, Buxstar is turned and bought alongside without any fuss or bother. In both Adelaide and Melbourne I am impressed with the way the Pilots come on board and, before taking control of the ship, agree a plan with the Captain.
There is a Monet exhibition at the NGV. Sad to say, I thought the best pictures were the Renoir portraits of Monet and Camille. I like the earlier works but am no longer so interested in the Giverny Garden scenes. Regardless, we are fortunate to be able to see such pictures in Australia and it’s always a pleasure to see the NGV’s permanent collection anyway. I take the time to visit the Australian Collection at Federation Square. They have changed the hollow logs on permanent display in the Indigenous Collection. I take some pictures to send to Will Stubbs at Yirrkala.
I have dinner with Nick and Lucinda M at Da Noi in Toorak Road. Time gets away and they insist I spend the night.
Thursday 23rd May
A good idea at the time but its murder fighting the traffic from Malvern to the Port this morning. There is worse to come. Ford Australia announces that, despite squillions in government handouts, it will close its plant in 2016 and 2,000 workers will lose their jobs. My gut feeling tells me this is not a situation where the work force have cut their own throats with crazy demands on wages and conditions. But because union greed and red tape have killed off so many other projects ex Ford workers will be lucky to find jobs in other places. The stock market plunges 3%.
We leave the port around 1pm on the high tide and reach the passage between Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean, the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, at about 4pm. Although the sea is calm the strength of the outgoing tidal stream is apparent from the billows, swirls and eddies it creates. The Captain has observed 5 knot currents here previously. Prime Minister Harold Holt went swimming off Point Nepean one afternoon in 1967 and was never seen again.
Later in the evening I’m invited to a crew member’s birthday party. The crew is a family, a brotherhood and this camaraderie sustains them on their long stints away from home. Its a jolly party complete with karaoke and cabaret. It occurs to me that although I am looking forward to home I will miss them.
Friday 24th May
I am sleeping very well as we pass Wilson’s Promontory at about 4am but on deck soon after as we pass the Bass Strait Oil and Gas Fields and observe what will probably be my last sunrise for the voyage.
Later we pass by Mallacoota close enough to make an internet connection and I can confirm we are not far from where Midnight Special sank during the Sydney to Hobart race in 1998. It’s a miracle the Air Sea Rescue saved David L and all his crew mates some of whom were badly injured. The weather’s beautiful today.
The Ford Plant Shutdown is still in the news. One journo puts it in perspective. The motor car industry in Australia employs over 500,000 people when you count dealers and service centres. And, its not 2,000 its 1,200 jobs so the closure is not quite as disastrous as it looks. The market is still falling.
South east of Montague Island and a fisherman calls to ask if we wouldn’t mind turning 10o to port to avoid cutting his long line. The Chief Mate obliges and we continue on towards Botany Bay with the wind freshening.
Saturday 25th May
It’s been a bumpy night and I am up before dawn in time to see the Pilot board off Botany Bay. It doesn’t look easy, particularly in darkness although the full moon is still bright enough to cast some light on the action. Pilot on board we turn for the heads and are alongside by 6.30am in time to see the moon set over Sans Souci.
The NSW Government decided to develop Botany Bay as Sydney’s second Port in the 1960s. Work commenced in 1971. The Maritime Services Board of NSW was looking for engineers for the Botany Bay Project so with my dredging and port experience I made the cut as a site engineer. The MSB’s team was relatively small for such a large project so I was exposed to all aspects of the job but most significantly the dredging. The new approaches to the port had to be dredged from around 15 feet to 70 feet deep and the dredged material was to be used to reclaim 300 acres in the new port area.
My other responsibility was to coordinate the installation of a single point mooring
(SPM) to provide a new liquid cargo terminal for Botany Bay. This involved the installation of a number of pipelines and was my introduction into that industry.
In the two years I worked at Botany Bay there was barely a day when some aspect of the work or other wasn’t held up by some form of industrial action. So when, in 1973, I was offered a job abroad I was pleased to go. Now 40 years later there is a stark reminder of those days. As I disembark and before one container has been removed from the vessel a stevedore hands a notice to the Chief Officer complaining about the container lashings. These have been acceptable in every other port. Welcome back to Botany Bay!! Nothing’s changed.
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