Under a hotter Sun; Terra Australis; Sydney

Terra Australis
Already there is a change of people on board. Familiar faces have left and new ones have found their way on board.

The same day, in the evening the Galileo moved on again. For us it would be a few days more until disembarkation in Sydney to which we were very much looking forward to.
The young Austrian family went also to Sydney and then further on to Brisbane where in a place called Wacol they could stay until they found jobs and accommodation.
We were on our own and had to look after ourselves. The Australian Government did not pay for our voyage nor for accommodation. They said the Swiss are well off and don't need help. Which was fair enough, we didn't expect it.
The family from New Zealand travelled on to Auckland. They spend a Year in Norway and were now returning home. The family from Cordoba was going to settle in Melbourne. Where they hoped to find jobs.
The few days remaining on the Galileo, was a little bit like being in limbo. I was not hungry and I didn't sleep all that well. Butterflies in my stomach, and I thought I was so strong to master anything. Now we were so near our destination it was nearly like utopia. The little cabin had become like a cocoon, safe and familiar. At least we did not have to worry about Peter or I finding a job. We knew were we wanted to settle, and we knew we wanted to buy land. One Italian lady made always a very unhappy impression. I saw her often because her boy was about the same age as Lilli and they played and roamed the Galileo together. She didn't like at all to return to Melbourne. She wanted to stay in Italy. Her husband was happy to return to his chosen new homeland. Many new Australians returning from their holidays in Europe were very exited and happy to be back home and send kisses into the soft, moist air when we had approached Terra Australis.
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In Melbourne we had some time to explore the city. We didn't fancy that and took the children to the zoo to have a look at Australian animals. It was quite cool and clouds were chasing each other trying to give us a glimpse of a blue Melbourne sky. The few splats of big raindrops soon turned into rain.
We returned once more, the last time to our momentary home. She, the Galileo was waiting for us. Proud, gleaming white and dependable. I was nearly a bit sad that this was our last journey. Yet the excitement to be so near to our final destination took over my emotions. On our suitcases it said in prominent letters Sydney, alluring, mysterious, proud. Soon these letters would turn into a city, into people, streets, parks and all the other beautiful and ugly sides of any city.
Everybody was on deck , what a show it was. Nowhere I felt the same excitement of the people, as when the Galileo approached Sydney harbour. It was like everything came to a happy end. The suitcases were hauled once more from the bowel of the ship and carried by the stewards to form neat rows to be picked up by the passengers. We said goodbye to a few acquaintances and in the excitement also shook hands with strangers.

My butterflies had settled, there was just a little flutter from time to time. Five persons, seven suitcases and numerous handbags, us, standing a bit forlorn on the quayside in between the hustle and bustle of strangers. What now?

There was not one single person in Sydney or for that in the whole of Australia, we could call and say, hey, we are here we have arrived!
Taxis arrived and departed. We better look for a hotel as we wanted to stay a few days in Sydney. We approached a Taxi and asked If he knew a nice family hotel. He took us and our luggage and delivered us to the Peoples Palace. The taxi cost us 7 Dollars.
We didn't know the Peoples Palace was managed by the Salvation Army. It was a tall, old building. Inside all was wood and we had 2 rooms on the third floor.
The first thing we did was looking for an escape route in case there was a fire. The rooms were fine. Everything very old fashioned. The beds were high, very comfortable with fresh, crisp white linen. The only thing I didn't feel comfortable about was the communal toilets and showers which one had to approach through a maze of dingy corridors. There were also a lot of odd people shuffling to and fro.
After settling in we left to have a look at our surroundings. We went to see the Opera House. We were thrilled to be standing on the broad steps, admiring this famous and formidable building. What a treat it must be to be able to be inside, all dressed up, and listen to a concert. We went for a long stroll in the Royal Botanical Garden. What a treat this Garden is. There were not many people. We looked at the trees which were all labelled with their name. It is a beautiful park.
The children took their shoes off and made very soon their first acquaintance with the very famous Bindi-eye. Ooh what is this, it stings, it hurts? A lady sitting not far from
us, explained that this was an Australian weed called Bindi-eye or the Australian way just Bindi. It grows in lawns in spring and summer, something to get used to!
In the evening Peter and the girls went out to have dinner. I had a terrible migraine, I felt so miserable and sick all I wanted to do was bury my head in my cushion.
The next morning I felt better again and we did a bit more sightseeing. Our heart was not really in this we wanted to be on our way to our final destination. So, we decided to call it a day and went to the railway station to book a train to Grafton.

Copyright 2008 T.S.

Under a hotter Sun; Welcome in Australia; We arrive in Fremantle

We arrive in Fremantle
I blinked into the silvery sunlight, I shaded my eyes and here it was Australia. A canvas painted without horizon, red soil streaked with muted, dusky silvery green. Soaring trees with giant dancers limbs and a never-ending sky lascivious, jubilant blue.

Could this land be mine, called home, with its colours so different from Switzerland? It affected me greatly, this strange land which I didn’t find beauty in the way I was used to, will it ever grow on me or will I be forever a stranger. I had to remember it was not the land that was the stranger it was I, the newcomer. I would have to adapt or I was to be forever torn apart. I was confronted now by these questions while the land stood still in its extraordinary glory, displayed its colours like fireworks at the sunsets.

My senses must get used to this surprising, flat red land with its lethargic vegetation. Birds don’t sing they screech, their colouring bold in rainbow hues displayed in flocks of swift wings. The slightest, tiniest cloud does not mar the sky the most brilliant blue bathed in a diaphanous sunlight.

Will I ever love this land as much as the land I came from? The green meadows and hills, the Alps blue with Gentian in late spring. The snow-capped mountains, the lakes and rivers. Will I not terribly miss the first call of the cuckoo and the trilling of the lark high up in the sky on a hot summer day with the warm scent of dry, warm hay in the air?

I told myself I will learn to appreciate new landscapes, new colours, and new sounds. I will learn the patterns of the seasons, when it rains and when it will be dry. I will be thrilled with the flora and fauna of my new country. I didn’t yet think about the people who live here about every day’s fallacies if you didn’t speak the language of a country properly. I felt numb, tightly wrapped up in this strange country it enfolded me like a big blanket and I only just could peep out. I looked out for roads that lead to airports, train stations, and buses in case I wanted to flee something I couldn’t explain.

We strolled around streets with strange names in an unfamiliar city in an alien land. The road lined with individual shops, was teeming with people. The shopfronts looked to me like they were set for a western movie and I glanced around if there might be also a saloon and some cowboys on horses galloping around the next corner, but there was no commotion, no shooting, just the happy talk and hum of people strolling from one shop to the other, sitting quietly on benches their faces shaded by sunglasses and hats.

Peter and the girls were sipping their milkshake, while I disappeared into a bookshop. I walked slowly around the shelves my eyes searching the titles about gardening in Australia.
A very old lady with a bright red scarf lightly tucked around her shoulders stood nearby leaning heavily on her ornate walking stick. The book she carried slipped suddenly from her hand. I made a few steps towards her bent down and picked up her book. I handed it to her and she thanked me and said with a slight smile it’s not easy anymore to bend down at my age. She said with a chuckle that she thought she was over 120 years old. I thought I hadn’t understood her rightly and asked did you say you are 120 years old. Oh yes, she said, all my family had reached this ripe old age, but unfortunately, I am the last of the family. She adjusted her red shawl that had slipped from her thin shoulders and leaning on her stick she walked out of the shop with a surprisingly light step. Before the sunshine enveloped her she looked back to me with a mischievous smile. Oddly I felt a bit sad I would have loved to know this lady. I had forgotten about my book and my eyes followed her until her red scarf disappeared. Perhaps she was just a tiny bit mad but she was very charming.

When I came out of the bookshop Peter and the girls asked me what I had bought. I said I have bought nothing and I went back into the shop and chose quickly a gardening book. It was a huge volume and on the title it said that it covered every aspect of gardening in Australia and New Zealand and Peter had the pleasure to carry the mighty tome around until we went back to the Galileo.

Under a hotter Sun; waving to Napoleon; We arrive in Cape Town;

Napoleon the first was born in 1769.
In 1798 he led an expedition to Ottoman ruled Egypt. His fleet was destroyed by Horatio Nelson that left him stranded. Undaunted he reformed the Egyptian Government and law. He abolished serfdom and feudalism guaranteeing basic rights for the peoples. The French scholars he took with him began scientific studies of ancient Egyptian history.
In a coup d’etat 1799 he seized power and established a new regime. He defeated the Austrians at Marengo and then negotiated a general European peace that established the Rhine river as the eastern border of France.
In France the administration was reorganized, the court system was simplified and all schools were put under centralized control.
French law was standardized in the civil code and six other codes. They guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the revolution; equality before the law and freedom of religion.
In April 1803 Britain resumed war with France on the seas. Two years later Russia and Austria joined the British in a new coalition. Instead of invading England Napoleon turned his armies against the Austrian and Russian forces and defeated them at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805. It was turmoil for Europe. In 1809, still at war, he beat the Austrians at Wagram. In all the new kingdoms created by the Emperor the code Napoleon was established as law. Free public schools were envisioned and higher education was opened to all who qualified, regardless of class or religion. Every state had an academy for the promotion of the arts and sciences.
In 1812 Napoleon landed his disastrous invasion of Russia that ended in his abdication and he was exiled to the Island of Elba. In March 1815 he escaped from Elba and made a dramatic comeback. Back in Paris he presented a new and more democratic constitution.
On June 18, 1815 his campaign into Belgium ended in his defeat at Waterloo. He fled and surrendered to the captain of the British battleship Bellerophon. Consequently he was
exiled to Saint Helena where he lived until his death on May 5, 1821.

We travelled in soothing comfort on our big ocean going hotel and life on board continued in its holiday mood. We sailed now along Southwest Africa the last country before our next step into Cape Town.
Still along the west coast of Africa where so much unhappiness for so many African people had occurred. Even if those atrocities had happened centuries ago, one of the last bastions of slavery in the so-called civilized world were the southern states of the USA. In 1727 the Quakers, a religious group of people tried to start to verso slavery. In 1865 slavery was abolished in the USA after the Confederates in 1863 lost their war to keep their way of life that included slavery.
I was greatly affected by the suffering of the slaves and the inhumanity of it when as a child I read the most forceful novel of its kind in American history, Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher – Stowe, a writer and abolitionist born in 1811 and died in 1890.

From 1530 until the abolition of the slave trade in 1870, ten million Africans were brought by force to the Americas. 47% were brought to the Caribbean Islands and the Guiana’s; 38% to Brazil, 6% to mainland Spanish America, about 4.5% went to North America and about the same proportion to Europe.


We arrive in Cape Town
We were happy to set foot once more on land after the long haul from Tenerife to South Africa.
It was spring, the air was balmy and the glorious Jacaranda trees shed their petals to spread a mauve carpet to welcome us.
We walked in the city and changed some Swiss Francs into South African Rands. We had a rest in a small park in the middle of the city. The bench we sat on was reserved for whites only, other benches were for blacks it said on small signs that were screwed to the back of the benches. It was quite an odd feeling to sit on a bench that was reserved for white people. I was wondering if sometimes at night when nobody was around the goblins would come out and change the signs around so the black seats would be white and vice versa the next morning, just to defy this awful system of apartheid. A small boy approached us with a tray full of little paper bags filled with peanuts. We bought one to feed the numerous squirrels that hovered around us. When we left the little boy followed us and we bought one more little bag; satisfied, he gave us a brilliant smile and waved us goodbye.
Table mountain stood out , a dramatic backdrop to the city of Cape Town. On this day the top didn't wear a tablecloth as there were no clouds. One day I would like to go back and explore the wildflowers growing on table mountain.
I was always on the lookout for interesting plants. On our strolls through the city I saw the entrance to a small park. We went in and it was an amazing place full of Aloes, a succulent plant with fleshy leaves, striped or mottled or just different hues of green. Very attractive with big towers of reddish hued bells. Small pathways were on both sides crowded by these beautiful, stately plants. I made a mental note that I would like to include them in my future garden. We explore a little of the city and we end up in a park with a playground for the children and a restaurant were we had lunch. The landscape is very dramatic with this big lump of a mountain watching over the city.

Cape Town was founded in 1652 as a supply base for the Dutch East India Company.
Discrimination against Non-Whites was inherent in South African society from the earliest days.
Indian leader M.K.Gandhi led the struggle to assure civil rights for Indian residents before world war one. Despite some concessions the Indian population retained second-class status after the war. South African blacks, the real owners of the place, had an even lower status. They lived in segregated areas and could not hold office; technical and administrative positions were closed to them.
Louis Botha a former South African commander became Prime Minister in 1910. One of the first acts of the new parliament was to pass the native land act. This prevented black people from buying land outside the so-called reserves. The limited amount of land available to the black people ensured a migratory, cheap labour force that was available for the mines and industries.
In 1914 J.B.M. Herzog founded the National Party. In 1918 a secret organization “The Broederbund” was established to further the white Afrikaner cause and interests.
At the heart of the National Party’s legislative agenda was apartheid. Every fundamental right was abandoned and violated. Communism equated to any struggle for change and was used by the NP as an excuse to arrest government opponents.
A group areas act was passed in 1950. Separate areas were reserved for Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians.
Stringent pass laws were implemented in 1952. They restricted and controlled black peoples access to white areas.
Blacks without passes who remained in urban areas for more than 72 hours were
imprisoned. Millions were arrested for such violations.
Marriage between white and blacks was outlawed. In the 1950s the black population was divided into ethnic groups; each group was assigned to a so-called homeland. Ten territories were established.
In 1954 legal obstacles were removed to further implementation of apartheid. To support the program the Supreme Court was filled with six judges sympathetic to apartheid.
In 1959 the government passed the promotion of Bantu Self–Government Act. This was an attempt to diffuse international criticism of apartheid by offering Blacks the right to participate in a political process within their homelands.
The economic advantage of this policy for the government was that it would relieve them of welfare obligations to millions of black people without losing the benefit of an abundant supply of cheap labour.
Blacks opposed this policy vigorously as it was a further erosion of their rights because it
forced them to accept citizenship in remote underdeveloped homelands.
In the 1970s all of the homelands were nominally self-governing. They were in fact entirely dependent on the national government. They were not able to sustain 75 % of the country’s population. Most Blacks continued to live in white areas, and the vast majority who lived in the homelands commuted to white areas as an enormous migrant labour force.
Apartheid a system of racial segregation was still in place when we were there in 1974. When we went into the post office to send away our postcards, there were also two long counters on each side separated from each other one for whites and one for blacks, one was not even in the post office allowed to use any counter, because we didn’t notice the signs and went first to the wrong side. We were quickly reminded to use the side for whites only.
The people who used the buses were separated too to blacks and whites only. We watched the buses arrive and depart and even if a bus that was destined for white people was half empty the black people were not allowed to use it. I only had a short impression how apartheid worked but it was not a pleasant experience.

Under apartheid a person’s race influences occupation, place of residence, education, choice of partner, freedom of movement, use of facilities and amenities.
Apartheid is a doctrine of white supremacy, legalized white economic exploitation, political domination and social advantage.
Segregation an inequality between races has existed and practised in South Africa as a matter of custom. After 1948 laws were applied to protect the doctrines of apartheid.
It was also reinforced with a harsh and intrusive security system, separate and unequal education, job discrimination and residential segregation.

Soon the Galileo was on her way ploughing the waters of the Indian Ocean. By now people knew each other more or less, rumours and stories went around about this one and that one and tempers got slowly frayed at the edges. We were very much looking forward to arrive in Australia. We were usually in the company of two other families. One young family came from Austria with two small children. The other family came from Argentina with three small children. Both families told me a lot about themselves and their circumstances, which were completely different from ours but in the end we all had one wish to arrive safely in Australia.

Under a hotter Sun; Life on board; We crossed the Equator;

Getting used to life on board;
On board the people were getting to know each other, and life was easy and pleasant.
The weather was mostly fine and there was a real holiday mood like in a big hotel in a resort. In those lazy weeks short friendships and clandestine love affairs bloomed. Little tiffs surfaced and were soon forgotten afterwards. In the morning the early raisers went for jogs along the decks. People were sunbathing on the decks, swam in the pool that was open for the time being. When the sea was rough the pool was closed and covered up with a tarpaulin to the chagrin of the children.
The girls made friendship with other children also they could not speak each other’s language. Not before long they used the lifts from top to bottom, were chased by the sailors from the first class swimming pool as they had soon found out that it was not crowded. They found their way to the kitchen to get apples from the cooks. They went to the movies, and blocked the lifts much to the annoyance of elderly lift users. They were full of mischief and had a lot of fun. They were bursting with energy; they had not had any school for more than three month. I decided, enough was enough and every morning they had to attend English lessons for children. Peter and I attended English lessons as well.

The teacher was a young lady and she did her best to cram a little of English grammar into the recruited heads. She taught us intriguing words like “thingamajig” and “full as a goog”! I found it fascinating to watch the “students.” One woman was very competitive; she tried very hard to catch the eye of the teacher to answer the questions. When she got all her answers right, she boasted how easy this was. I think she got pretty much on the nerves of the poor students who could barley assemble an English sentence. Sometimes a heated exchange of words in different languages took place as pencils and pens scratched over rumpled foolscap, trying to make sense of a new language. One young lady was never finished with her grooming, combing her long, blond hair or trying to stick on an inch more to her blood red fingernails that took all her attention. She didn’t even look up when she was called to answer a question; she was so absorbed into her beautification.

Finally we got used to our cabin. For Peter was a bed provided in the next-door cabin. He didn’t want to sleep in a cabin with strange people. The girls drew straws to decide who slept with whom. Marie-Louise and Jacky slept together head to foot, but the bickering between the two didn’t stop so we decided that Lilli and Marie-Louise should sleep together for the time being. It worked as we were ignoring their complaints.
Our Cabin Steward looked well after us. Every morning he cleaned our cabin and made our beds. He was always sitting in the corner near our cabin and in the coming weeks I sometimes had a chat with him half in Italian and half in English. His home was in Genoa and he had a little daughter, his wife was dead. He had always been a ships steward and had travelled the world.
As a goodbye present from friends in Switzerland, all three girls had received a red T-shirt with their name in bold letters printed at the front. They loved their T-shirts and wore them often the sailors got to know their names and always called out, hi Lilli, hi Jacky, hi Marie-Louise.
We also experienced very rough seas, howling gales and cold weather. People fell sea sick and the dining room was visited only by a few. The girls were fine and didn’t feel
seasick at all. I was in my top berth lulled by the up and down motion that took place in my brain. I was slowly fed dry, small bread rolls and after a day and night cooped up in our tiny cabin, I had to get up. I felt weak, like emerging from a long and serious illness. I bundled up in my coat and a headscarf and went up and outside. The wind was fierce; I could barley open the door to the deck.
I nestled into a deckchair that stood against the wall. I felt much better breathing the salty, fresh sea air. Nobody else was around. It was bliss to have the stormy sea all to myself. I was fairly sheltered under the canopy of an upper deck. There were no sea birds, no flying fish today. The sea was hissing and broiling, changing her colour with the shifting clouds showing her fickle temperament. Peter so far didn’t show any sickness until he went up for lunch and a fellow passenger told him to drink a fair amount of whisky to bolster his immunity against seasickness. I was half asleep when he white as a sheet, nearly fell with the door into the cabin and quickly crouched over the washbasin to get rid of the whisky and also the fish he had for lunch. After that he felt better and went back on deck, but not before he made the suggestion to me that I try the trick with the whisky as well.
We never knew who our cabin neighbours were, but we knew there was a French couple with two teenage children that occupied the next-door cabin. They were a very
vocal and demonstrative family. Long and very heated arguments were fought with the odd missile hitting the connecting wall to our cabin. When this first started I ventured out carefully to see our steward and asked him if he heard that racket and if it wouldn’t be good of him to go in there and tell them to be more civilised. He threw up his hands in horror and said no…no…no… He didn’t want to go in their and risk to be hit as well. Anyhow somebody took action, as they tried to keep their arguments to themselves. They also seemed to have run out of missiles. Sometimes somebody ran out of the cabin huffing and puffing and tried to slam the cabin door, which didn’t work. When I saw the steward he pointed to their door, lifted his shoulders slightly and we smiled.
Pleasant days followed each other as our voyage took us further along the African coast, past Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Dahomey, Nigeria, Cameroon so all this exotic places just remained places on the map in the lobby. We travelled now in the Gulf of Guinea and the days were warm and pleasant like summer days. We were not far from the Equator, which is an imaginary circle on the surface of the earth, dividing it into the northern and the southern hemisphere, between Cameron and Gabon.
Ptolemy the Alexandrian Astronomer during AD 100 divided the equatorial circle into 360 degrees and created an imaginary North-South and East-West Network over the surface of the earth as a reference grid to find positions of known Islands and Continents.
In roman mythology Pluto was the god of the dead, the husband of Proserpine. Pluto assisted his two brothers Jupiter and Neptune to remove their father Saturn from power. They divided the world between them, Jupiter chose the earth and heavens, Neptune ruled the sea and Pluto received the lower world where he ruled over the shadows of the dead.

It was the day we crossed the equator.
Early in the morning when I stepped out on deck I was embraced by moist, warm air; it was a very agreeable sensation I had never experienced. In a sauna, the hot, moisture is harsh and leaves one exhausted. This was, like being gently swaddled in a moist, warm baby blanket, it was wonderful.
Big preparations were made for a celebration and the baptism for the ones who traversed the first time the equator. Everybody was on the main deck when sailors performed a sort of macabre play with the birth of Neptune and then chased the people for their baptism. When they were caught, they were thrown without much ceremony into the pool. The sailors had also positioned a tall pole with a trophy on top of it. They asked anybody who would be game to climb first. Nobody did, as it would be pretty hard for the first person to reach the top, as the pole was completely smeared with liquid soap. Peter, always a good sport, didn’t want to spoil their fun and made the beginning, it was very hard because of the slippery soap. He didn’t make it to the trophy but he got a lot of applause because he was the first to try. The ones that tried later had it easier and with time most of the soap was rubbed off and some young guys reached the top.
We were together with some of our new acquaintances and talked what sort of revenge we could take and Peter had the idea of hiding the white shoes of one of the entertainer, a rather small man with a tiny moustache and always in a white suite, who had taken them off for whatever reason. It turned out not to be as humorous as we thought it would be. The poor guy was frantic when he didn’t find his shoes. He was rather comical and at first we thought he just played along but it turned out that he was really despaired, when he didn’t find them it was just like he had only one pair of shoes. We couldn’t watch him longer and showed him where they were. He didn’t laugh; he was not amused.

We passed by the African countries of Gabon, Kongo and Angola.

Of Gabon I remembered the humanist Doctor Albert Schweitzer who arrived in Lambarene in 1913 and build his hospital and helped and treated thousands of people.
As a German national he was interned in France from 1917-1918. In this period he wrote two important philosophical works, The Decay and restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. In 1924 he returned to Lambarene and rebuild his hospital. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 and died in 1965, a truly great man.
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During 350 years, from 1470, the Portuguese, the French, Dutch and English carried on a very lucrative slave trade from this area.
Freed slaves founded Libreville in 1849, the capital of Gabon that became independent in 1960.

With the name Kongo the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley and his famous remark “Dr. Livingstone I presume?” came to my mind. He founded Kinshasa that he named Leopoldville in 1881 as a trading depot on the Congo River.
He was ruthless and nasty towards the African native people whose country he explored for the sake of European Nations. He received a knighthood for his service and he died in 1904 when more or less all of Africa was in European hands.

In 1974 Angola, a country rich in mineral resources was still under colonial rule from the Portuguese. The Portuguese were not fair and kind and didn’t apply a policy of equality. Their only interest was to exploit the riches of the country to the benefit of Portugal. It was calculated and cruel. In 1974 the adult literary rate was still only 15 %. Angola was governed by a system called “do indignato”, a rule of economic exploitation, educational neglect and political repression.
In the 1950s a nationalist movement grew and in 1961 a guerrilla war against the Portuguese and their exploitation of Angola was initiated. Angola reached independence from Portugal in 1975.

Forced labour
The Portuguese Empire first established a de jure system of forced labour throughout its colonies in 1899. The Portuguese government did not implement the system in Angola until 1911. It was abolished it in 1913
In 1926, later that year, Salazar reestablished forced labour, ordering colonial authorities to force nearly all adult, male, ethnic minorities in Portugal's African colonies to work.
The government told workers that they would only have to work for six months of every year. In practice, this obligation was a life sentence of forced labor. Civil rights for natives, no longer treated as natural law, had to be "earned" on a case by case basis under the designation of assimilade. Less than 1% of the native population ever achieved this designation. By 1947, 40% of workers died each year with a 60% infant mortality rate
By 1940 the white population in Angola had risen to forty thousand, 2% of the population. Most of these émigrés, illiterate and landless, took the best farming land, regardless of availability, without compensating existing landowners.
The authorities expelled natives, forcing them to harvest maize, coffee, and beans. Natives could "volunteer" to work on the plantations, voluntários, or face conscription, working for $1.50 per month as contratados. This system of forced labour prompted 500,000 Angolans to flee, creating a labor shortage, which in turn created the need for more workers for the colonial economy.
By 1947, 40% of the forced labourers died each year with a 60% infant mortality rate in the territory (according to The World Factbook's 2007 estimates, infant mortality rate (deaths/1,000 live births) in modern-day Angola was 184.44 - the worst result among all countries in the world).
Historian Basil Davidson visited Angola in 1954 and found 30% of all adult males working in these conditions; "there was probably more coercion than ever before." Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's Minister of the Colonies, recognized the inherent flaws in
the system, which he described as using natives "like pieces of equipment without any concern for their yearning, interests, or desires". Parliament held a closed session in 1947 to discuss the deteriorating situation. Henrique Galvão, Angolan deputy to the Portuguese National Assembly, read his "Report on Native Problems in the Portuguese Colonies". Galvão condemned the "shameful outrages" he had uncovered, the forced labour of "women, of children, of the sick, [and] of decrepit old men." He concluded that in Angola, "only the dead are really exempt from forced labor."
The government's control over the natives eliminated the worker-employer's incentive to keep his employees alive because, unlike in other colonial societies, the state replaced deceased workers without directly charging the employer. The Portuguese Government refuted the report and arrested Galvão in 1952[3] In 1961, Galvão would be involved in the hijacking of a Portuguese luxury cruise liner.

Somewhere along the borders of Angola and Southwest Africa we passed the remote Island Saint Helena, made famous by Napoleon.

Under a hotter Sun; Queen Dido

Queen Dido
The Galileo with its busy cargo steamed through the strait of Messina that separates mainland Italy from Sicily connecting the Thyrrenian Sea with the Ionian Sea. The strait is 32 km long and 3-8 km wide.
Malta waved as we travelled into the Mediterranean Sea.
Along the coast of Tunisia I thought of the beautiful, legendary queen Dido, founder of the ancient city of Carthago. Her story is told in different versions but ends always unhappily in suicide.
When Dido’s husband was killed she fled to North Africa with her followers, where she founded the great city of Carthago. Jarbu from whom she had purchased the site of her city wanted to marry the prosperous Dido and if she didn’t comply with his wishes and demands he threatened her with war and destruction. She didn’t love him and she had also sworn she would never marry again and would in no way subject herself to his demands and killed herself.
In Virgil’s version Dido fell in love with Aeneas who was shipwrecked at Carthago. When Jupiter warned Aeneas that he had to leave Carthago to follow his mission to found Rome, Dido despaired and killed herself on a funeral pyre. On his journey Aeneas met the ghost of Dido in Hades, but she ignored him completely and never spoke to him again.

Cato the Elder was a sworn enemy of Greek Culture. He campaigned vehemently against the immorality and luxury of roman life. In 157 he went to Africa to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Numidian tribes people. He became obsessed with the idea that the city of Carthago with its wealth and luxury was a menace to Rome. Every speech he made he ended in the Latin sentence, “ Delende est Carthago” what he said was, Carthago must be destroyed.
In the third Punic war 149-146 BC, Carthago was destroyed by the Romans, under Publicus Cornelius Scipio Aemilicus Africanus Numanticus. In utter contempt they spread salt over Carthagos ruins and nobody was allowed to occupy the city for 25 years. Thus the wish “ Delende est Carthago” of the roman statesman Cato the Elder was fulfilled.
Our history always dramatic, never simple, always violent and rolling on!

Look beyond the horizon

We left Algeria behind and bypassed the rock of Gibraltar, which is steadily a tug of war between Great Britain and Spain, into the Atlantic Ocean, and along Morocco; I wished we had a stopover at Casablanca, the city that optimises exotic and romantic days gone by.
In the Southeast and East, Morocco follows in great sweeps Algeria and clings with broad steps in the South to the Western Sahara. The Argan, a thorny tree is principally found in Morocco. Moroccan women produce a fine cooking oil from its fruits.

The captain didn’t hear my wish for a stopover at Casablanca and headed for Tenerife instead.
Some couples were disembarking there, as their cruise ended within the Canary Islands. It seemed they were not happy with their cruise. I was sitting nearby on a deckchair when I overheard them saying, if they had known that the Galileo was “ein Fluechtlingsschiff” a ship for refugees, they would have chosen a different cruise. I didn’t hide my smile; I thought it rather funny when I looked at their indignant faces eloquent with disapproval. For their sake I hoped they had their last dinner at the captains table that would dissociate them from the “refugees”!
While we travelled on the Galileo we revised our geographical and historical knowledge in the most agreeable way one could imagine.

At Gibraltar we passed into the northern Atlantic Ocean before crossing the Equator into the southern Atlantic.
The name “Atlantic” is resultant from Atlas one of the Titans, the son of Iapetus and the nymph Clymene. Atlas and his fellow Titans fought in the war against the deities of Mount Olympus. His punishment was to bear forever on his back the earth and the heavens and on his shoulders the great pillar that separates them. .
Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders was used in the title pages of early maps. An Atlas now represents a quantity of maps.
The Atlantic is the second largest and the most heavily travelled Ocean.

The Galileo had to take the long way around the Cape of good Hope to get into the Indian Ocean and on to Australia. The Suez Canal was still closed for ships in 1974.
In the 13th century BC. the first canal was excavated between the Nile River Delta and the Red Sea. For the next one thousand years the canal was more or less neglected. Some rulers, at various times had it re-excavated. In the 8th century AD the canal was abandoned. From time to time proposals were made to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Ferdinand de Lesseps had enlisted in 1854 the interest of the Egyptian Viceroy in the project. In 1858 the Universal Company of the Maritime Suez Canal was established with the authority to excavate a canal and operate it for 99 years.
In 1956 the Egyptian Government nationalized the Suez Canal to finance with its proceeds the construction of the Aswan High Dam. In October 1956 Israel invaded Egypt. Two days later Britain and French military attacked Egypt to ensure the free passage through the canal. In relation Egypt sank forty ships in the canal effectively blocking it. The Egyptian Government reopened the canal in March 1957. The canal figured prominently in the conflicts between Egypt and Israel during the 1960s and 1970s. The canal was finally reopened in June 1975.

Tenerife.
I remembered a little of its history from a novel, “Les partages du vainceur”, I read in the sixties,
The story was written about the time when Cristobal Columbus made his voyage of discovery to the Americas. The native people of Tenerife were called Guanche and they had a very effective whistle language. This whistle language was used for communication when they wanted a Message from one place to the next delivered. A man climbed up on a hill and whistled shrilly. As soon as he received a reply he send out the message to the next man who continued the whistling procedure. It was said this way of communication was very effective around 1492 in Tenerife!
They had also the habit of extremely fatten girls that were about to get married; they preferred very plump little brides. They lived in caves and made very sophisticated fine clothes from Goats leather. The Spaniards arrived on their island and conquered the people and their way of life.
I looked at the steep, now bald mountains and out to the Atlantic, what a paradise
they must have had.
The Galileo moored in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Tenerife was always a very important port for cruise ships and with its holiday resorts it caters well for holiday guests.
The stallholders were ready for the Galileo. They had laid out their wares, mostly trashy souvenirs that would be bought by tourists on impulse to take home to be left to gather dust on dressers and windowsills. One stallholder sold colourful woollen garments. I bought a red poncho with an intricate, colourful knitted pattern. Yes, I knew I fell for it too but it was so tempting to buy something so colourful and outlandish. To wear it was a different matter when not used to wear such a garment without sleeves. Once it is pulled over my head I am deprived of arms and hands. It is very awkward, say, I want to hold a cup of coffee; firstly I have to search for my hands under layers of knitwear adorned with fringes and pompons. In Australia it found its way to St. Vincent de Paul and perhaps somewhere someone is still struggling with this garment.
After a day sightseeing in Santa Cruz we said good-bye once more. We had a long stretch of voyage before us to Cape Town.

As soon as the ship was out of the harbour it was announced that there would be a emergency drill at 10 AM after breakfast. The stewards also made their rounds, knocked on cabin doors to alert people to get ready for the drill. We were already old hands at this procedure as we had done it before. When we heard the siren we had to make our way as fast as possible to the main lobby were we were handed our live saving vests and queued at a specified area to get into the boat. The woman and children were separated from the men, as they would go first in to the boats. They lifted the boats down, but we didn’t have to get into them. We only had to know the routine in case of an emergency, but it was still eerie when I heard the siren, because it could also be for real. The upper decks were teaming with people all adorned in their orange vests. Everything was very orderly nobody was pushing, but I wondered if that would be also the case in a real emergency.
The Galileo was now on her way along the west coast and many countries of Africa, to the very tip of the South African republic and the city of Cape Town. I would have loved if we had a stopover at each of these African countries. The Galileo moved on regardless and all I got was just sometimes a glimpse at the horizon.


I was thinking, that the second largest continent with its huge diversity, mountains of gold and precious stones should be the richest on earth. The people should live free from hunger and be quite well off amidst so much wealth. But they are not. The West African Sahel drought, which began in the late 1960s lasted more than ten years. The agriculture of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad were devastated.
Western Governments have also changed boundaries of tribal lands in the manner to suit themselves. After independence of some African countries that instigates a lot of unrest and wars between different ethnic groups.
Wars and hunger herds people together, miserable and homeless they receive some handouts. Where is the justice from a few handfuls of wheat when there is much more needed? Ordinary things to lead a decent life, like homes, clothes, toys, schools and medical help when it is required. When some of the spoils taken for centuries from the African soil and its people are returned then the Africans don’t need cheap handouts anymore.


Africa the cradle of mankind.
Five million years ago a type hominid, a close evolutionary ancestor of present day humans inhabited southern and eastern Africa. More than 1,5 million years ago this toolmaking hominid developed into the more advanced homo habilus and Homo erectus. The earliest true human being in Africa Homo sapiens dates from more than 200’000 years ago, he was a hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools.


The African soil is awash with the tears of the African people.
Most slaves transported to the Americas came from the west central coast of Africa, where we travelled along in leisure.

Although slaves were transported throughout the Americas the vast majority went to sugar plantations in the Caribbean Islands and Brazil. It lasted four Centuries and millions of Africans fell victim to this traffic in human lives.
Further south the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1575 and it was here that half of all the slaves sent to the Americas originated.
During the later 18th century sentiment in Great Britain turned against the slave trade. The British outlawed the slave trade for British citizens in 1807.
This was probably instigated by the years of enlightenment 1768-1786 with its belief that the application of reason and good sense could solve all the problems of mankind.
British efforts to control the east African slave trade led in 1822 to a treaty prohibiting the sale of slaves to subjects of Christian countries
However an active slave trade continued for large numbers of Africans were seized for the clove plantations of Zanzibar and for Middle Eastern slave markets.

Under a hotter Sun; Life on board;

Life on boardWhile the ship was on its way towards the straight of Messina we settled into a life of
easy and carefree time.
I had a look at all the different salons, Library, Card Room, Cinema, hairdresser and lots of shops, bars, and late into the night dancing and entertainment. The most exhilarating was standing alone on the windward side, let the wind tousle my hair, grazing my cheeks and take my breath away, far out where the waves bruised with froth, captured the colours of the sky, deep turquoise to dark blue and stormy grey.
We had happily settled to certain regulations like mealtimes. Breakfast, Lunch and dinner a main occupation were always taken at a leisurely pace. Everybody loved to congregate towards the dining room area well ahead of the time when the dining room’s door opened. They had always two seating's. First served were the people with children. We shared our table also with a family with three children. This family was returning to New Zealand. They had spent a year in Norway, as he was a Norwegian. He went as a sailor to New Zealand and met there his wife Terry a Maori. We had only halting conversations, as we hadn’t a very good command of English.
Breakfast was always well appreciated. Our waiter looked well after us and brought us lots of freshly baked bread rolls, butter, jam and hot strong coffee, one could also have a cooked breakfast, which we never took.
For lunch and dinner was always a carafe of red wine available on the table. The food was, well just food, not to bad but also not exciting. As entrée there was always pasta with tomato sauce or soup and little bread rolls. Some people doused their soup with generous amounts of olive oil and on their tables were mountains of bread-roll crusts, only the soft doughy inside is eaten. Every day we ate eggplants, steamed, baked, or roasted to death, mostly cooked to something purple mushy unidentifiable. They must have brought tons of eggplants on board. Probably there was a glut!
Desserts were everyday cake and ice cream. The cakes had the taste of those packet cakes one can buy in Supermarkets. I guessed there were some tons of those as well on board.
Well, my mother always said:” Hunger ist der beste Koch!” roughly translated, when you are hungry you eat anything! She knew all about that. My mother was born in 1910 in Austria and went through two world wars, and she said, as a child, she was always hungry.
So, as a child, I was taught never ever to waste any food. I thought of that when I watched the sailors throwing buckets of food into the sea. At least it was not wasted it was eaten by the fish.


SicilyOur next stop was Sicily, which had a very turbulent and bloody history that bestowed a lot of hardship on its inhabitants from the beginning. Its ancient name was Trinacria. A little of its turbulent history. It is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The still-active volcano Mount Etna dominates and also scares it from time to time. The recorded history of Sicily began with the settlement of the Greeks and the Phoenicians.
The Carthaginians arrived on the Island in 536 BC. In 480 BC the Carthaginian army was defeated in a battle by Gelon. The Gelonian Dynasty at Syracuse fell in 466 BC. Sicily had peace for 50 Years. In 410 BC the Carthaginians and the Greeks renewed war. By 210 BC the whole of the Island had become a Roman province. In AD 440 was an invasion by the Vandals and a cession to the Ostgoth leader Theodoric.
The Byzantine general Belisarius recovered the island for the Byzantine Empire in AD 535. In the year 827 began the Saracen occupation of Sicily.
In 1061 the Normans began their conquest of the island. The Norman rule was succeeded
By the Hohenstaufens in 1194 and in due course the house of Anjou took control in 1266. In 1282 the Sicilians had enough and revolted against the oppressive rule of Charles the first. The revolt is known as the Sicilian Vespers and began with a massacre of French soldiers. The island of Sicily became independent and chose King Pedro III of Aragon. The Spanish crown retained Sicily and Naples until the war of the Spanish succession. In 1713 Sicily was separated from Naples and handed over to the Duke of Savoy who ceded it to Austria. Receiving in exchange for the Island of Sardinia.
In 1734 the Bourbon Don Carlos, later Charles III king of Spain invaded Naples and Sicily. He was crowned in 1735 and was recognized by the Treaty of Vienna, as Charles IV, King of the Two Sicilies. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, Italy enjoyed almost 50 years of peace.
The turmoil of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars brought new troubles.
In 1820 a military uprising took place in the Neapolitan dominions joined by a revolutionary group, the Carbonari, to secure a constitutional government. A power struggle continued. After 1843 the republican theories of the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini took hold in Southern Italy. There was more bloodshed as Ferdinand took his revenge. In 1860 after Northern Italy was free from the rule of Austria the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily with a thousand volunteers and won control of the island. In 1861 Sicily was then joined to the new kingdom of Italy. The national Government had little understanding of the south. The Government was challenged by rebellious workers, which were again burdened by taxes and military conscriptions. Mutual suspicion characterized north-south relations. In July 1943 Sicily was invaded from North Africa by American, Canadian and British forces. Mussolini fell from power and the Italian Government capitulated.
In 1948 Sicily became a locally autonomous region of Italy, with powers of self Government.
I always think what a world with all the wars everywhere and politicians promising anything and then pulling any strings to suit the rich and mighty. When one looks back....it was never different....the Borgias....the Medicis...the Sforzas...they are and were everywhere. Also, the Machiavelli's are still well and alive in the great world theatre of ours!

Messina,
I was very much looking forward to visiting this city with its ancient history. The Greeks founded the city 735 B.C.
The villas and houses are of the simple classical build. The once vibrant colours of the
stucco is now sedate, worn out by the Sicilian sun and the salty winds of the sea.
The diffused Venetian red blotched and streaked with tears. Traces of dramatic ochres are flushed and rouged. The dominantly yellow washed facades are faded and tired, yet the stuccatur still picked out in brilliant white. The villas looked sleepy with their wooden shutters closed to keep the tall rooms in cool calmness. I imagined the sun, finger boldly striped patterns on floors, walls and furniture, removed only by the following shadows called upon in the late afternoons. The houses and colours are just fantastic, and if I would like a house it should look like those.
Unfortunately, earthquakes plague the city. It suffered badly from an earthquake in 1908 that killed 83’000 of its inhabitants.

We walked slow and easy along streets with houses exquisite in their faded elegance, above us a limpid blue and open sky ready to be painted in delicate watercolour.
Wherever I looked senses were alerted, inert feelings started to sing.
We arrived at a tiny piazza, a perfect square edged with evenly spaced Orange trees. The orange fruits looked superb partly hidden by fresh green leaves. We couldn’t withstand the temptation and plucked one orange. It was a Seville, bitter orange, good for marmalade, not for eating fresh.
We said goodbye to beautiful Messina, which was ready to stage in the next dramatic play.

When I was a small child I knew that an Island called Sicili existed. It had an aura of something wonderful exotic, as at Christmas time we got presents of small, blood oranges, each carefully packed in fine, white tissue paper. On the paper was the head of a curly-haired African boy and in big, bold letters around it said MORO, Sicilia.
Later on, I met young people from Sicily, they came to work in Switzerland. They were always homesick for their Island. On Sundays, they wore fancy, colourful clothes and gathered at the railway station their melodious language reverberating around them and when young girls passed they called “Ciao Bella”!
They were seasonal workers, called “Fremdarbeiter”. Many Swiss didn’t understand their exuberance and joie de vivre.
In spring the trains arrived from Italy with young men to work mainly as labourers on building sites. Their possessions stashed in cardboard boxes or old suitcases hold together with bits of string.
At the end of the season, in late autumn they returned home. Through the windows of the train now went lots of boxes with presents and goods bought for their families. Happy faces smiled and looked eagerly forward to going home. A faint “arrivederci” was caught by the wind as the trains departed.

Under a hotter Sun; Omega Watches and gold jewellery

Omega watches and gold jewellery.
On our various strolls around the area, we were approached many times by young men who secretly showed us Omega watches and gold jewellery. One young man was very persistent and wanted to sell us an Omega watch. Peter showed him his wallet that only held a minimum of money. He was very keen to sell this watch for a few thousand lire.
The watch seemed to be fine, but at home when we had a closer look, the Omega sign inside the watch suddenly slithered off it was only stuck on with glue. Then Peter took the watch apart and the Omega watch had only one Ruby. The next day, we were again approached, by an eager, very friendly, French-speaking young man, to buy an Omega watch. But as we had already made our experience and also paid for it, Peter took the watch from the young fellow and looked at it very closely and said to him, that this was not a genuine Omega. He asked Peter if he worked in the Omega factory and Peter said yes I do. The young fellow calmly took the watch back and hid it under his belt and then boldly brought out a few heavy look-alike gold bracelets for us to buy. Peter took the jewellery and rubbed it vigorously and then smelled on it and said this is not gold. This time, the young fellow nearly jumped out of his boots and ran to his superior crook, in his haste he spoke half French half Italian and cried… il est…Dottore…Dottore… and pointed towards Peter.
The boss, wore a cream fedora, dark sunglasses and white shoes, approached us slowly and from the inside breast pocket of his jacket took a heavy gold chain with a big, golden crucifix and said boldly with a little lisp in his speech, this one is real gold and you can buy it very cheaply. Peter said he would love to buy it but he did not have any money left as our holidays just finished and he emphasised this by opening his empty wallet. The fellow looked us up and down, then he turned around deliberately slow and withdrew to the place he had left to try his tricks on us. It felt a bit creepy, as shady figures seemed to congregate around us. We tried to look calm and nonchalantly strolled away. As soon as we were out of sight we walked faster and then Peter decided we make big detours on our way home in case the mafia was on our heels. The girls thought this was fun hiding in doorways and behind pillars like in a movie, as we hurried along unknown, small alleys.

The time is upMost of the holiday guests had left. Not many apart from us were still swimming and strolling along the beach. It looked already empty and we knew soon it would be our time to leave too. The sea had lost its tranquillity; hungry waves were pounding the empty beach. A jellyfish stung Marie-Louise. The grandmother smeared ointment on her foot and was telling us off not mincing her words about letting the girls swim in this weather.
The caretakers wanted to pack up and leave; they had enough and looked forward to quiet wintertime. We relinquished our borrowed blue deckchairs, the umbrella and the beach-cabin. The girls rummaged
the last time in the big bag of forgotten bikinis and we said our goodbyes to the bagnino and the bagnina who had looked well after us.
We strolled the last time along the Lido. The beach looked deserted and desolate. The wind whipped up the sand and swept it in ripples around the locked and shuttered cabins, all the colourful beach paraphernalia hidden within. The sea took its colour from a mud-smeared sky and uninvitingly lapped the grey sand oblivious to all changes. All friendliness had gone. The landscape, the people; the houses had gone through the autumnal metamorphosis, turned inside out, masked themselves in shades of woolly grey, moody brown and slivers of dusky purple.
The days before we left were chilly and rainy and the first snowflakes made a wavering announcement.
Our holiday mood went we were glad to move on, to our next destination the Galileo Galilei, that waited for us in Genoa.
In the early morning of our departure, the sky tried hard to give us a last glimpse of faint blue. The solid, opaque clouds, unsettled, moved and shifted, urgently helped by forceful wind gusts that loosened the last brittle leaves from the trees and the odd raindrops teased us when we were waiting outside for the taxis.
They took us swiftly and without delay to Viareggio where we boarded the train for Genoa. It was like everybody wanted to be rid of the tourists and guests to get back to their own lives and families.
The train that brought us six weeks ago took us back the same way along the Riviera di Levante that always brought a thrill to me as I very much loved this area and found it very special. Towards midday, we arrived in Genoa. We stayed there only for the day and night as the next day the Galileo Galilei was to sail. We should have made more time to explore Genoa, as this is such an ancient and important city.
It was in the fourth century B.C. known as a Ligurian port and town. Later around 200 B.C. the town became a Roman Municipium. In the Middle Ages since the tenth century, it was a free state and a very powerful commercial town and port. The monumental cathedral San Lorenzo, the churches and famous Palazzi Doria, Cataldi and Durazzo gave me a lasting impression how important and absolute fabulous Italy is, its melodious language, music and literature, its buildings, its art, the food and the flamboyant Italians themselves. XXXFB

The Galileo Galilei is waiting; outside the train station was a makeshift office located, announcing with big banners that this was the place to register for the Galileo. A couple of clerks gave advice about where to go and what to do.
Crowds of people and hectic traffic swarmed around us and I felt swamped by a throng of noise. By now the sun had emerged from her nest of cotton wool, heated up and emphasised the fumes and oleaginous smell of the never-ending honking cars and buses and the uncountable, swift little Vespas that zipped to and fro. It was an accretion of smudged, grimy blurs combined with fragments of hazy blue skies, shifting strong colours of greens reds and yellows, people went past, and milling around, shouted, yelled and laughed like it had all to end shortly in a big finale.
Slowly, pace by pace we advanced to the stand and we presented our tickets and travel documents. They had already booked us a room in a pensione, then they told us where to check in our suitcases.

Thanks to a nifty taxi driver we soon found the pensione we were looking for.
The room was very spacious and it was on top of a very tall and narrow, solid house wedged in between others of the same build and grey stone. From the window, the view was over houses and roofs with laundry drying and collected by busy signoras calling to each other from rooftop to rooftop. I saw cobbled streets and also a very small park, a tiny spot of greenery with a fountain spurting brilliant diamonds in the last rays of the sun.

In the evening, when we came into the dining room it was already full of people. The mood was pleasant in anticipation of a satisfying meal as the savoury aroma from the kitchen drifted into the dining room and titillated the taste buds. The tables were set with white, clean linen that came freshly laundered from the rooftop where they had caught all day long the wind and the sun like sails on an open sea. Maria, Mariaaaa… it called from the kitchen. Maria her hands and arms full of plates heaped with steaming pasta, fragrant with herbs and fresh, sweet tomato sauce, capably placed them before the hungry guests. The steady hum of conversation slowed down as everyone tucked into the food.
We were tired and excited at the same time and soon after dinner, we went up to our room.
The next morning we were early up, we had slept well despite our excitement. After a quick breakfast, we left the pensione full of anticipation to take the next large steps into our venture.
We took a taxi back to the wharf. We assembled with hundreds of other passengers in a huge check-in and check out hall. All our suitcases and hand luggage that we had left there the previous day were already checked, marked with numbers, letters and crosses and then left with thousands of others to be brought up into the cabins.
The hall was vast and roped into long isles and indicated with letters where people should queue. We followed the line with the letter S and arrived at a long table with four gentlemen facing us. Our passports with the important Australian entry visas were thoroughly inspected and checked, our faces searched and identified with the ones in the passports. I had never stood before a jury but it must feel a little bit like this, guilty or not guilty. Finally, we were handed our passports back and with a friendly wave, we were dismissed and sooner on our way out than we thought….next!