Across the smaller ditch

New Zealanders sometimes call the Tasman Sea the ‘the ditch”, though they have trouble pronouncing it correctly.

There is a smaller ditch, though, which separates us from Tasmania. Bass Strait can be a fearsome stretch of water at times, and crossing it can be interesting. Once, it was an adventure.

The second time I did so was on the second night of my honeymoon, and that was a little strange. I was in Vietnam as a young soldier when my wedding and honeymoon were being arranged, but it all depended on when the Army said I was to go home.

On about November 19 I was told that I was booked on a plane going back to Australia on the 21st.

I came out of the bush on an Iroquois and to Nui Dat for the night. In the morning I handed in my gear, mostly for burning, explained as well as I could where the missing bits and pieces were (who knows, or cares?) and filled out forms I didn’t bother reading. I was going home. In the morning I rode a Caribou to Tan Son Nhut (Saigon) and late that night I was airborne for Sydney, and sound asleep all the way.

I was told, a couple of months later that I’d have to pay for replacement uniforms and so on because there was no proof of how I’d disposed of the originals.

That was just the army doing what the army does. I explained that to the quartermaster, told him I wasn’t paying, and because the war was young and no-one knew what to do with the blokes coming back he let it go.

I was given some tablets – chloroquine and primoquine, I think – as stepdowns from the paludrine we’d been taking to keep malaria in check.

It didn’t stop us getting malaria, but it suppressed the symptoms. There were 21 of one type and, I think, five of the other, poured into my hand with some hasty instructions. I don’t know where they finished up – I was going home.

Meantime, my mother and my fiancée were organising things in great haste, because while we knew roughly in what month I was coming home and some of the broad detail had been sketched in, there was now a sudden haste.

Val had got us a flat in Dandenong and I was horrified when she lashed out $16 on things like a broom, washing powder, a dustpan, clothes pegs, washing powder, a bin and so forth. That was big money and I’d never even considered such mundane things.

We’d decided to honeymoon (if I might use that as a verb) in Tasmania, and in those days that was virtually an overseas trip. Believe it or not, most of the blokes in my unit had not been overseas until they went to Vietnam, perhaps not the best introduction to overseas travel. Tasmania was an interesting and almost-overseas destination, so we booked on the Princess of Tasmania. This was in 1967 and the P.O.T. was seen as a glamorous boat.

The problem was that we were getting married on December 9, so when I got home on the 23rd, the wedding was only 16 days away.

It was also the start of the holiday season and bookings on the boat were heavy. My mother, never one to be denied, got us what were probably the last two bunks on the Princess , bless her, but Val was in a single-berth cabin about midships and I was somewhere up near the bows, in a cabin with three other blokes of whom not one spoke English and all of whom were drinking something that left me gasping for air. Good blokes, but it was a long voyage.

Still, it was glamorous to us, and glamorous was much more within reach, much more affordable, than now. We drove Val’s Vauxhall Viva down to Port Melbourne and drove into the dark and echoing bowels of what we saw as a gigantic ship, with very great timidity.

We went upstairs and stood on the deck thinking what a great adventure we were having – and we were. She sailed just before dark and we walked the decks watching the water and the wake and the lifeboat and the waves and all the things that were new to us.

We had a drink and we ate a meal, as cheaply as we could, and we went to our far-apart bunks and Val went to sleep, while my new friends celebrated my wedding about 200 feet further forward.

In the morning we woke and located each other in time to watch the coast of Tasmania come out of the darkness to watch the shore take shape and form and harden into the Devonport coastline.

We went down the Mersey river to the berth, thinking that this river was far too small for such a large boat and waiting for those crunching, grating, sounds that means the water has become just a little too shallow. She seemed to be heading in at a speed that would have suited a water-skier, but the crew apparently know what they were doing, or got lucky, because we tied up without incident.

We recovered the car, drove up ramps and through barriers and past fences and finished up in Devonport, with no plan, very little money and a relationship on which we still were working. Life has continued in much the same vein ever since.

Fifty two years later this might all sound a little trite, but back then we’d had a real adventure. We’d been on a ship. We’d crossed Bass Strait. We’d been way out of sight of land. We were in a new place. We were together and we were equally naïve, excited and rather pleased with ourselves.

It was to be a camping holiday, because we had very little money (we got home with $40 and a $44 car payment due) and there were a few adventures along the way. That will make another story on another day.

What I set out to talk about was the modern era of the cross-Strait ferries. There is a whole vast history of trying to maintain the links across the

Strait, involving coastal shipping, primitive aircraft and all sort of adventures, all sort of dramas and not a few deaths.

The Princess of Tasmania was the first of the modern ferries to cross those turbulent waters and just as the Boeing 747 jumbo was about to open the skies to t the ordinary person, the Princess opened the way across to Tasmania, and you could save a bundle by taking your own car, as you can still do today, though we did not have a bundle when we left, and we had far less than a bundle when we got home.

This was at the end of the sixties, or almost, an era in which young Australians were willing to adventure, to have a go, to sort out the consequence for themselves and take life head-on. It was an exhilarating time for many of us.

So I have not yet got to the topic of this week’s story – long-time readers of this column will not be surprised. Next week’s story, perhaps even two weeks, will be about the series of modern passenger ships that have been the bridge between our smallest state and the mainland – to write up the cargo boats would take several volumes.

At some other time I’ll talk about the small ships, and the aircaft that bridged the Strait for so many years.

They have all been vitally important.