SIX WEEKS ON THE SHIP ” FAIRSTAR”, NOT SIX WEEKS ON “THE LOVE BOAT. “
Everything was packed and parcelled up to board the 20,000 ton ship, Fairstar at Southhampton in early September 1968. This ship was part of the Sitmar line which also owned sister ships Fairsea and Fairsky.
Fairstar was originally a British Troopship called The Oxfordshire. The latter was converted in 1964 and as Fairstar, known as the Fun Ship, was used for immigrant voyages as well as being a popular Australian cruise ship based in Sydney.
Her maximum capacity was 1900 passengers. With 1200 adults and 700 children on board, that capacity was achieved for our six week journey.
Although hopping on board with your family to get to Australia in 1968 caused tummy butterflies, goose bumps and fleeting feelings of panic, I guess that the common thought is something like “‘What the heck am I doing here? Have I done the right thing?”. Some people even refuse to get on board at the very last minute and I guess that is quite understandable given the relative permanency of the commitment and the shock of watching weeping relatives in the embarkation area.
I think many simply looked at the miserable weather that they are leaving behind and think of the miserable wet summer that they’ve just gone through, the cost of living, the crowds, the strikes and food rationing and say ”BUGGER it, aren’t we lucky to have this wonderful opportunity. Australia, here we come!!!”. The 20 pound sterling Pommy bastards, as you are affectionately known as in OZ.
We had built a large wooden, lined, waterproof shed in our Jersey garden, which was suitable, appropriate and acceptable by Australian Customs and other Authorities, to take all of our possessions and unload them in Hobart. We had purchased a home shortly after our arrival, without any special other conditions attached, apart from spraying for myriad insects and other creatures which were alien to Tasmania. This turned out to be a wise move, and eventually helped us to settle into our new country and home with all of the bits and pieces that we had owned in England and the 9 mile long by 5 mile wide Island of Jersey in the Channel Isles. What a relief!
HOW WAS EVERYTHING ON BOARD THE FAIRSTAR OVER THE SIX WEEKS?
You meet new folks, Aussies who are going back home after spending a few weeks in Europe, some of whom had never travelled outside of the Great lakes of Tasmania, graduate students returning home after a year of BEA [Been to England and America], retirees on bucket-list trips or schoolies itching to sow their wild oats across Europe with or without falling for one or more Italian paramours.
There were 450 crew on The Fairstar. As soon as you stepped on board, it looked spick, span, spruced up and very welcoming. I had never been in a boat that was any longer than 4 metres, and that was only when Ian and I went bass fishing off the south coast of Devon.
Throughout our whole journey, the standards of cleanliness and service were admirable, a far cry from opinions we had heard about The Fairsky, a sister ship, whose demise occurred at sea a couple of years later when a huge fire burnt out the engine room whilst carrying a large bunch of immigrants who had to be rescued. Vale Fairsky.
The Brass Band boomed at us with a farewell selection, ending with”Life on The Ocean Wave” and, with bells,whistles and foghorns blasting, the buntings were released and it was anchors away.
It really takes several days of orientation, especially when you have Dan, a four year old boy, and Zoe, a two years and three months old girl, in tow 24/7. Children eat earliest, a couple of floors away in their dining room, then you eat, four floors away in a totally different direction. Then you pick them up again, take them to the kids’ play area to play (if the nanny nurse has gotten over her previous night’s night out), or take them yourselves if the nurse is still incommunicado. Eventually you get it and play the game according to your cards – ”Some days are diamonds, some days are stones”. It isn’t as though there are masses of alternatives unless the sun is shining and the pool is inviting and not too many kids are peeing in it.
We made a number of new friends and spent social evenings mainly at the Surf Club bar on the top deck, whilst fulfilling parental obligations for Dan and Zoe.
In general, bedtimes were early, with no late night dancing, and mornings meant breakfast for the kids at 7am and ours at 8am. We had been very busy in the weeks prior to packing up and leaving Jersey so rest was probably our greatest need and blessing.
Las Palmas appeared after a lot of swell and vomiting in the Bay of Biscay, and then onwards to Cape Town which was spectacular yet sad in 1968. After Cape Town, we ran into the tail of a cyclone, had to go down south towards Antarctica to avoid seriously bad weather, but ran into enormous seas.
For 8 days we endured lockdown because we were experiencing sixty foot waves. These waves brought the ship onto their peak and then, as you looked out of the port hole you could see and feel the ship being dragged and dumped into an enormous hole, only to the sucked and chucked back upwards another sixty feet, ad infinitum ad nausendum. This was persistent day and night, very, very frightening and there were no facilities for reassuring messages to be sent to the passengers cabins.
On the eighth day we were given an apology and told everything was OK. Anyway, even though it was still very cold outside of the cabins and in the dining and other rooms, we were reassured that for the next 8-10 days, the weather was expected to be warmer and the monster waves had gone altogether.
Fremantle Port was our introduction to Western Australia, a filthy place full of rusty and rusting iron, barren, soulless. and very shacky. Didn’t see any other parts of the town.
Wonderful, long term English Doctor and wife friends, who had immigrated to Rockingham five years previously, threw a fabulous Dinner party for us .and, since the Fairstar had to undergo repairs in Fremantle, we were collected, wined, dined and thoroughly spoilt and returned later the following day.
We met many of their GP and Specialist families and were immediately invited to join their Practice, straightaway or later if we didn’t want to stay in Tassie. They stayed in Rockingham for some years before moving to Wembley North in Perth, where they continued in general practice until their eventual retirement.
They certainly renewed our strength, revived our hopes and excited our minds. We spent a few days crossing the Great Australian Bight before staying 2 days in Melbourne and then crossing Bass Straight.
After travelling up the magnificent Derwent River, we arrived in Hobart to a clear sky and a warm sunny day. The best moment of the whole six week cruise was to see the majesty of Mount Wellington emblazoned in all it’s glory as it reached for the sky. Friends, with whom I had agreed to act as a Locum in their General practice for three months, picked us up, sorted out all of the necessary immigration and medical papers and took us to a dear little waterfront house in Berriedale where we could sleep, collect our thoughts and generally settle for a few days prior to starting work.
WE STARTED A PRIVATE PRACTICE AT 57 TRANMERE RD,
HOWRAH, TAS 7018.
Yes, our very own practice.
I finished my locum in North Hobart and spent a few days looking at all of the Hobart suburbs where GPs currently had their Medical practices.
We plotted them on a large map, travelled to each area, looked at where the shops, chemists, schools and Hospitals were situated, and chose the Howrah area on the Eastern Shore.
We had been told that Howrah was ‘an overcoat warmer’ than anywhere on the Hobart side of the city. It had the most magnificent views of Mount Wellington across the Derwent River, and the City Centre was a mere 10-12 minutes by car across the lovely Tasman Bridge.
There was a waterfront weatherboard house at 57 Tranmere Road, with a flat garden front, just back from the road, and a wide back garden with a small gate leading to a beach frontage and a sandy beach. The beach was shared by seven families who had access to it.
In Tasmania, your private house can also double up as a Medical Practice (and some other professions), subject to a small number of local regulations, Council inspection and approval by your profession.
We bought the house and collected and emptied our container load of possessions from Jersey. We then informed everyone via the Mercury newspaper that we would be starting a medical practice at No 57 on a certain date. I polished my brass plate vigorously, and had a couple of celebratory glasses of bubbly.
The next day, I attached and displayed the brass plate and went to the printers to order some packets of professional cards. I diplomatically asked them to display my, not insignificant, collection of qualifications, to their greatest advantage, which they did.
Anita, in the meantime, as Practice Nurse/Midwife, Practice Manager and general factotum, had been sorting out tons of more important stuff. The kids were having the time of their lives, the weather was hot and sunny, and all was well with our new, Australian way of life.
In England, because of a thousand and one regulations, you would never have gotten past first base if you had tried to set up a private medical practice.
Here in Howrah, as a doctor, you were welcomed with open arms. In England, every man, jack and his neighbour would be spying on you behind the curtains and speculating with each other as to whether you’d last for 5 minutes, 5 days or 5 weeks before your proposed business reached such an in-extremis situation that you would be forced to rejoin the National Health Service shortly after.
In Hobart, all your hitherto unknown neighbours, would also peek at you through their curtains in the hope that they could come and help you to settle in, invite you to a barbecue, say on Saturday, and then bring their kids to you on Monday because they’d been sniffling, grumpy, feverish and coughing since the Saturday barbecue.
Lionel came to No 57 early on the day after our arrival at Tranmere.
”G’day, Doc! I’m Lionel, your local milkman, and I also deliver the Mercury newspaper Monday to Saturday at 7 am to this house. I’d be happy to continue to do that for you if that’s alright? By the way, Doc, we’ve got a Lions Club Ladies evening at the Shoreline Hotel on Saturday week at 7:30 pm. You’d be welcome to come as a guest and bring the wife with you.”
”Gee, thanks Lionel, that sounds great. Let’s do the milk and the Mercury, and Ladies night on Saturday week. Keep in touch”‘.
Every one knew Lionel. He’d been a bit of a footy hero with local club, Clarence, for years and was as dinky di, a straight thinking, straight talking, fabulous Aussie/Tassie bloke that you could ever wish to meet. Fifty years later he was still coming to our medical practice which was now 20 miles away in Lower Sandy Bay.
When you work as a self employed person in your own medical practice, you are the sole earner even if you have a brilliant Nurse/partner. So you have to meet lots and lots of potential customers, as you would in any other business. It used to be very popular among families for me to visit sick people in their homes if it was difficult for them to come to our surgery, for whatever reasons.
In 2020, home visiting is unusual because doctors are, not uncommonly, bashed, robbed of money, credit cards or drugs from their doctor’s bags. There are certainly villains out there who are not averse to luring a doctor into frightening, uncompromising situations, more particularly at night and in the suburbs of larger cities.
I cannot recall any colleague to whom this happened in the 1960s but can name three in the last twelve months in one Australian state, all of whom were severely injured and traumatised.
I learnt a lot from home visits and once a week spent nearly all day at homes in Lindisfarne, Rokeby, Lauderdale, South Arm and Opossum Bay. This helped to consolidate my list of regular attendee families.
Playing club rugby with Associates, tennis at the Domain Club and becoming a Lion’s Club Family Member significantly widened our
social life.
After a few months, I was invited to do some clinical work with Paediatrician Professor Ian Lewis as his regular Clinical Assistant at the Royal Hobart Hospital Out Patient Department. Professor of Medicine, Albert Baikie, also let me loose on 5th and 6th year medical students as a Sessional Lecturer from time to time.
Prof. Lewis walks past my home most mornings (Oct 2020), buys his newspaper from the local News agency, and we often have the odd chat.
He is now 94 years old, has been a world wide name in Paediatrics, and commands great respect, though few would be aware of who he is and how important his multiple accomplishments have been to thousands of families in so many Continents.
Matty (not his real name) was registered as a Totally and Permanently Incapacitated War Veteran (TPI), though he never travelled outside of Queensland in the Vietnam war, and, as far as i’m told, had only lifted a gun to shoot rabbits when hunting on his mate’s smallholding somewhere on the way to Port Arthur, long after the war was over.
When he applied for a Veterans Affairs pension assessment, it appeared that the current regulations provided various benefits, according to a system of points scoring, and, at a certain score you would be accepted as a TPI.
Matty, though not one of the shiniest of coins in the purse of life, had a couple of helpful, understanding legal mates who knew precisely how the scoring system worked and regularly submitted new medical conditions which they argued could not be excluded from having been somehow related to his war service.
These applications were often placed after Matty and mates had emptied several Cascade bottles of beer, which presumably stimulated their cerebral areas of fantasy and confabulation.
Anyway, Matty was, at that time, a real regular attendee providing lots of new symptomatologies in his effort and mission to achieve just a last 5% of scoring points. Some of these new curious faux aches or itches could not be found in any current medical textbook. Although I was not the final common arbiter on these important matters, my reports were always carefully scrutinised by those higher up the tree of decision makers.
This was part of the rightful Aussie doctrine of fairness and fair go!
Every request for that magic extra 5% was refused though. Eventually, Matty came urgently to see me about “this bloody itchy rash’,’ which had erupted around his tummy button in an area about 3 cm wide and extending all the way back under his left shoulder blade.
I was certain that he had developed ”SHINGLES’, an infection in a little nerve caused by the chicken pox virus. When you get better after chicken pox virus infection, the little virus can stay in your body and go to sleep in a nerve at the side of your spinal cord. Although it rarely causes you any problems, it can irritate the nerve and cause a painful itchy rash which disappears after about 2 weeks but can cause pain in the affected area for some time in the future. A special antiviral drug which, if taken for about five days, can usually prevent, or certainly reduce, any future pain.
I asked Matty if he had ever had chicken pox and we found three little scars, caused by past infection with the virus, on his neck.
“Yea Doc, I remember scratching the buggers when I got it in the Army in Queensland.”
I contacted one of his legal mates, with Matty’s consent, and said ”Look, Andy, I’ve found Matty’s 5%. Yes, he had had chicken pox in the Army and now he’s got shingles as a result of the chicken pox he caught in the Army.
I also found three old scars on his neck from the original infection, so we can definitely conclude that it was Service related and there is just a vague possibility that it could erupt again in the future.”
“You bloody beauty, Doc!” exclaimed Andy, the legal eagle.
Everything suddenly got fixed up. Matty got his 5%, so that he now had his 100% TPI points. He also got his full entitlements from Vets Affairs.
Matty lived nearly 20 miles from my surgery. There were no longer any buses that he could catch to come and see me. He hadn’t got a car or a friend with a car either. The next time I saw him in the surgery, he arrived in a huge Commonwealth car, complete with a small flag on the bonnet and driven by a Chauffeur. The Chauffeur collected him at the end of the consult, opened the back seat door, let him in and drove him home.
That’s an Aussie ”fair go” for you, Mate!
In 1969, there was a serious Influenza epidemic in Australia. Tasmania, like so many other States, had a few thousand cases. Unlike COVID-19 in 2020, there were fewer cases, fewer deaths and fewer serious complications. Everywhere you went, people were coughing, spreading the Flu and, in addition to packed surgeries, we did a lot of home visits.
Patients came in and out of the Clinic quickly after diagnosis, took their aspirin or paracetamol, steam inhalations and cough medicine and mostly gradually improved at home over the course of several days.
Muriel, a 73-year old lady who lived only a 5 minute stroll away from the surgery, had got the flu and sent her ever attentive retired husband to the surgery to ask for some simple cough medicine. Unfortunately, Muriel was one of those people who, whenever she took any medicine, nearly always sent it back with the message that it wasn’t any good because she was ”ALLERGIC TO IT”.
It was really hard to change that view in Muriel’s case, as it was in the case of many people who had this idée fixe. I was very busy and found, in my medicine box, a bottle of Mist Senna and Ammonia cough medicine. I handed it to her hubby without charge and advised that Muriel should take 20 ml three times a day until she finished the bottle, and to come back if she was concerned about her progress or ask me to visit her if a visit seemed indicated.
About 30 hours later, her hubby returned with the empty medicine bottle, apologised to me profusely for bothering me and confessed that his wife was allergic to my cough medicine which made her vomit a lot almost immediately after she took her 20 ml dose. My thoughts were far from pure at this stage but rather than say what I really thought, I simply apologised, asked him to hand me back the bottle and, after having a quick check with the label on that original bottle, was about to chuck it out when I realised that this was not a bottle of cough medicine.
A bottle of Mist Ipecac et Nux Vom had clearly secreted itself on the same shelf as the cough medicines and in my hurried state, I had provided her with a medicine that we used in children or adults who had inadvertently consumed one of a possible number of poisons and for which, at that time, the Mist Ipecac et Nux Vom, by causing a lot of vomiting, actually got rid of the ingested poison by returning it from the stomach and vomiting it back up through the mouth almost immediately. I slipped the Mist Ipecac et Nux Vom bottle discretely into the rubbish bin and gave hubby the real stuff plus pitiful reassurances.
There must be some lessons to be learnt from from my inexcusable actions, and there are …
1. As a Doctor, never be too busy to check any instructions between ones self and one’s patient.
2. Never underestimate the veracity of your patient’s story, and always take it seriously.
3. At the end of the day, even if you are very tired, mistakes are much more likely to occur, however good a Doctor you may think you are.
4. An early apology and discussion with a patient or family member, if you have made an error which isn’t something serious, will often defuse a potentially difficult situation and prevent your Medical Defence Union becoming involved to defend your action.
Muriel found her new medicine to be to her liking and was well again in a few days, probably as a result of nature’s help and despite my medicine.
DAN HAD A LITTLE FRIEND UP THE ROAD, THAT IS UNTIL XMAS DAY I969.
Like all other families, Christmas Day for us is always a special day. We had celebrated Xmas Dinner on Christmas Eve, as we always do, and that gives us a bit more time with the kids early on Christmas morning. Tommy (not his real name), lived about 3 minutes walk away and he and Dan played together regularly on the beach front at the back of the garden, as kids do when they are 5 or 6 years old. Early on Christmas morning, Tommy was at home excited and waiting for relatives to come over to his house to distribute presents. He heard a car, raced off across the lawn to the road and clearly failed to see another oncoming car. In a moment of terror, he was hit and killed, virtually instantly. Neighbours called me and I responded immediately, but alas, Tommy lay lifeless on the road side.
The rest of the story is the sad reality of how a family’s Christmas morning became a family’s and Community’s Christmas mourning
SHE SAW THIRTY DOCTORS BEFORE THE CAUSE OF HER HEADACHES WAS FOUND, BUT “ALL’S WELL” ENDED, TRAGICALLY, “NOT WELL”
A well known aphorism in medical diagnosis is that common illnesses are common and rare illnesses are rare.
Sarah (not her real name]), was born around 1922 and lived in a Queensland country town, far from the city centres, and poorly serviced medically. Her family struggled. She went to the local school, was a willing and quite intelligent student and of pleasant disposition. She often complained about her headaches. She saw the local GP, was diagnosed as suffering from migraines and hobbled along on rest, Bex and other pain killers when her parents could afford them.
Although the headaches were regular, they never seemed to go away entirely. They were not considered to be of a serious nature and, although an occasional locum doctor examined her, the diagnosis remained “migraines”.
As she went through her school years, she became quite timid and shy and sought the quiet solace of her bedroom more frequently, accepting that she had migraines, that they weren’t properly curable, and that she would have to put up with them. Occasionally the family would go to the City and would take Sarah to other doctors for an opinion but the result was always the same: “Migraines. Sorry, we can’t do anything other than what the other doctors have told you”.
This pattern continued with frequent visits to her doctors and second opinions being sought as and when an opportunity arose. Sarah developed anxiety and depressive symptoms which were labelled as “not unusual considering all the circumstances” and the family accepted pastoral treatment from a kindly, interested local Minister. Psychiatrists were neither available nor considered trustworthy in the late 1930’s, with rare exceptions.
Sarah’s problems were taken rather more seriously by a well known lady of substance and family background in Queensland when Sarah was working for her as her house cleaner. The good lady had an excellent network of professionals, including a wise old neurologist who proffered a diagnosis which was confirmed by a neurosurgeon. I confess that I had never heard of this medical condition and it is as rare as hen’s teeth.
Sarah was born with a very tight rim of bone at the back of the skull at the point where the spinal cord enters the skull and joins the actual brain. It causes a sort of partial blockage of the brain and spinal cord fluid and the build up of pressure causes headaches. This diagnosis is CONGENITAL PLATYBASIA. The problem is treatable and curable by careful neurosurgery.
Since the advent of special X-rays, CT or MRI Scans, Sarah’s condition would have been able to have been diagnosed much earlier on in her life.
Sarah was eternally grateful to her employer and dedicated her life to being her constant companion. One day, Sarah brought me a large handwritten book, in which she had carefully recorded all of her medical records based on the 36 doctors who had been involved in the saga that was her illness over a period of 25 years. It was, reflectively, a very sobering account.
When the old lady passed, in her mid-nineties, she generously bequeathed Sarah sufficient funds and facilities to live a life of relative comfort as a reward for her unfailing loyalty, help, companionship and love.
PLEASE NOTE
The title of this vignette introduces A TRAGIC ENDING for Sarah. On the 5th of January, 1975, the Ship Illawarra smashed into the middle of the Tasman Bridge on a foggy evening, resulting in the deaths of 12 people. One of those people was Sarah, whose car plunged over the edge of the broken bridge into the dark depths of the River Derwent and was never retrieved.
DID YOU SAY THAT PRINCESS MARY OF DENMARK’S FATHER USED TO PLAY RUGBY AND TOUCH FOOTY WITH YOU ALAN?
Dr John Donaldson was a Professor and Departmental Head of Mathematics at the University of Tasmania for a number of years in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He was also Captain of Associates Rugby Club in Hobart and a fine attacking Centre. I played some matches with him in the early 1970’s until I was taken off the field with a grade 2 A/C Joint injury after a try-saving smother by Big Paddy from the Harlequins Club.
John helped ” Soaks” Club win the Statewide Championship that year (regrettably, without me). He became the top Club Rugby referee and, despite his absolute fairness, frequently copped crap from the sideline spectators especially from the Glenorchy mob for whom the best that can be said about them was that they were constantly intimidating and were frequently uncouth with their verbiage. Glenorchy did play the best Rugby in Tassie though .
John and his wife had three charming daughters, a Nurse, a Pharmacist and Mary a Sydney-based Real Estate Agent, and a son, John. They all used to work out at a well known local Fitness Centre that five professional local business men, including myself, owned in Salamanca, Hobart.
Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark came to Hobart from time to time in those days having met Mary in Sydney during the Olympics preparations. He subsequently married the stunningly beautiful Mary and, having whisked her away from her family and admirers in Hobart, they now are the heirs to the Danish Royal Throne with a posse of fine looking children in tow. The kids are: Christian, age 15 in 2020; Isabella, 13; Josephine and Vincent age 9. John lost his first wife, Hetty, a wonderful person, to a sudden illness in 1997. He and his second wife, Sue, I gather, live in an appropriate Royal home in Denmark and John recently retired as Professor of Applied Mathematics at Oxford University. Anita and I last saw them when we went to the Theatre Royal in Hobart together to see Sir Ian Richardson, Sir Derek Jacobi and Dame Maggie Smith perform the 150th performance of Shakespeare’s Comedy Character vignettes. John is now 79 years old, as of Sept 2020, and we wish his family great happiness in future years.
BY JANUARY 1972 WE WERE GETTING A TAD TIRED OF BEING AVAILABLE 24/7 AND AT WEEKENDS.SO WHAT DID WE DO?
It was obvious that, as much as we had enjoyed the last three years, Anita and I had been qualified for 11 years,now had 3 children in tow ,having been blessed with Tara in 1970,and were ready to take on the world again, but always remembering that we could come back to Tasmania again at any time in the future if another opportunity arose.I applied for,and was offered the three year post of Clinical Epidemiologist,at The University of Exeter’s Post Graduate Institute of Biometry and Community Medicine,back in Devon.This offered lots of scope to reset our next 40 years or so of professional life,including acquiring a further swag of updated Postgraduate qualifications, as part of my agreement,with all expenses incurred paid at Central Government educational rates.It certainly didn’t fit in with the notion that ”If it seems to good to be true ,it probably is.”
We sold the Medical Practice and house fairly quickly and settled into a full month of holiday bliss at Dodges Ferry south of Hobart.Every day was hot and sunny ,in January 1972 and gradually we made our way [paid by the University of Exeter],back to Exeter via Western Australia and Singapore.