Emigrating to Australia

 

I have just joined a Facebook group called Castel Felice Ship and found lots of photos and stories of their crossings to Australia from other members. There is no way I can learn who took all these photos so I cannot give credit to the photographers...

My parents, younger brother, Ian and I set sail from a snowy Southampton on December 10th 1967. I had my 11th birthday two days later, Mum and Dad gave me the presents from our family.
We had intended to fly to Perth but an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK meant we had to sail as a form of quarantine. The ships usually went through the Suez Canal but as the ongoing war/conflict between Egypt and Israel made it unsafe we had to take the long way around stopping at Los Palmas in the Canary Islands and Cape Town in South Africa.

We children were required to go "school" each morning to keep up our reading etc as the trip lasted 29 days in all. Being under the age of 12 yrs I had to eat with the younger children and the meals were more suited to very young children and so quite unpalatable for me...I made up at Afternoon Tea-time with extra cakes!
There were regular activities organised such as a fancy dress party and the most important crossing of the equator ceremony presided over by King Neptune...we were all given a certificate like this one...

Crossing the Bay of Biscay was rather rough and Mum was unwell for a day but once out into the open sea we all enjoyed the sailing. We went ashore in Los Palmas and saw markets selling typical Spanish dolls and sombrero hats etc. Later on we saw flying fish from the ship and it was soon warm enough to "swim" in this pool that was deeper than it was wide!

Arriving in Cape Town was memorable. The bright blue skies, Tabletop Mountain and porpoises swimming in the harbour made a big impression. It was Boxing Day and 96F and we went by bus to the park at the top of the mountain. I wore a pink long sleeved woollen dress from Marks and Spencers with long white socks and my black patent leather shoes for this outing lol!
Sadly we saw at first hand the shame of apartheid, park benches with "no blacks" etc written on them, separate toilets and segregation even on the buses. We also saw 3 young black women who had obviously been drinking try to board a bus ...the conductor would not let them on and swung his heavy ticket machine into the face of one girl. We were shocked and went back to the ship.

The crossing to Fremantle took 2 more weeks and we had to divert south to avoid a severe storm in the Indian Ocean. It was so rough that we children were able to slide on our bottoms from side to side across the Purser's Foyer as the ship rolled! It must have been frightening for the older people but I was invincible at that age. Ropes were strung across the larger rooms to hold on to and the dining rooms were almost empty as people stayed in their cabins.

Castel Felice was first launched in 1930, named the "Kenya" and sailed between India and Africa, you can read more of her story here . Robert Brinkhuis has written a wonderful account of his family's crossing here and I can now see that some of the photos come from his story.
This ship was 150 metres long, the Voyager of The Seas is 311m long and Captain Cook's ship The Endeavor was a mere 32 metres! Castel Felice was scrapped in 1970 in Taiwan.

So that is how we came to Australia

xx