Hiking and naval history Ah! The weekend at last, and today's Saturday is overcast and grey. A perfect day for going on a bush walk.
Yesterday our 14 year old daughter returned from a two day hike with her high school along the
Bibbulmun Track. This is a 900 km long trail which takes intrepid hikers through what is left of our southwest forests - the parts where the clear felling and strip mining activities can't be seen.
Of course she didn't walk the whole distance. Just a short section starting at the northern end near Mundaring. Perhaps one day she will take up the challenge to do the full distance and wind up on the south coast?
But there will be an easier option because there is another similar trail near completion which will be exclusively for cyclists on mountain bikes. A large section of the
Munda Biddi bike trail is already complete.
Our daughter's excursion was uneventful. No kangaroo tics latched onto her, and she came home safely. Like everyone who has been away for a few days from this household, the first thing she did was look inside the refrigerator.
Son number three (24) is away on a major Scout camp down Busselton way this weekend. He's a Rover Scout and been with the Scouting movement ever since he was in short pants. Well he's still in short pants. The Rover movement is for adult scouts and they help out with looking after the younger ones.
Tomorrow will be the 65th anniversary of the loss of
HMAS Sydney II off the Western Australian coast in a battle with the German raider
HSK Kormoran. The entire 645 crew of
Sydney perished, almost without trace. As I remarked on the 19th last year, the Royal Australian Navy has still failed publish the position of the wreck site. They reckon they don't know it.
By chance I recently came upon some online pictures of
HMAS Sydney entering Fremantle Harbour prior to WW2. They are in the LISWA collection in Perth. As is with the trend in many government archives in Australia, the organisation has prohibitive fees and daunting conditions to discourage authors from using them in publications. This has a significantly negative effect on teaching Australian history. But you can take a free look by clicking the underlined links in the next paragraph.
The photographer was the late Izy Orloff. He was a sort of an independent photographic blogger in the early 20th century. He took photos of all sorts of things and events which no one else bothered with. The following link will take you to his image of
HMAS Sydney II entering Fremantle Harbour in 1927. Here is another one of it
alongside the wharf.I've hundreds of similar images I have taken of more recent warships doing the same sort of thing. I used to be alerted to their arrival from the shipping news in
The West Australian newspaper, but a few years back the pea-brained naval "intelligence" types got the idea that terrorist spies might take advantage of the information, so they forbade advance publication. Unfortunately this meant that catching inspiring photos of warships coming and going has for this historian now largely become a matter of chance.
But the reality is that thousands of people from all walks of life know when the ships are due. Providors, refuellers, garbagemen, hotels, bus and taxi companies, prostitutes, souvenir sellers and so on. And anyone living with a view of the ocean certainly can know a couple of hours in advance when they come over the horizon. Of course the warships are easily seen from all over Fremantle once they are in harbour. The crews also tend to be conspicuous when on leave. Even this year I have seen US sailors in the streets of Fremantle in uniform - peaceful daylight excursions of course. Our drunken yobbo-terrorists take over the streets at night and all hell can break out.
© MMVI Paul R. Weaver.
About the writerCheck out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.
Technorati ProfileWho links to me? 
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fremantlebiz's journal