Shore Leave

Whenever a ship returned to it's home port the crew would sign off and new crews employed, sometimes the existing crew would be reengaged but not always. As a ordinary seaman  I often found myself out of work for several weeks, sometimes months. The marinetime employment centre was located in a shed under the Sydney  Harbour Bridge at the time and we would be required to attend each morning at 9am. We would line up for any job on offer for which we were qualified, while the first mate of what ever ship requiring men would walk up and down several times deciding on  who he liked the look of. The only thing we were not required to do was open our mouths so he could check our teeth! The whole process was very 19th cent. You might say seamen were not held in very high regard.

In the evening I would visit my mother, on some nights I would go out with old Jack to sell  his painted silk scarves. He would spend the day copying various flowers pictures out of the Women's Weekly  for this purpose, Jack was quited a talented painter and had been doing this type of work for many years at sea. In some way this first aroused my interest in art. On other evenings we would go to different migrant clubs and run a little tattoo business out of the men's toilets, another skill Jack possessed. The equipment was fairly primitive and frankly I never could warm to all the blood, but lonely single men seemed to gain some satisfaction from tattooing their loves name on their arms. We always used the toilets as this gave us access to a power point to run the machine. My main job was to keep a look out as this sort of activity was not encouraged by the authorities.

While ashore on these occasion I first became acquainted with the varied kitchens of Australia's new migrant class. A favorite of mine was a Greek club in George Street, Sydney were I was  introduced to eggplant and feta cheese, it was the only eatery that I can remember at that time were a big chunk of bread would arrive in a cane basket on the table free of charge. This was the start of my love affair with the Greek Islands not the bread but Greece in general. A country were I was to spend many wonder full months in the future. My readers must remember that Wiener Schnitzel was consider quite exotic at this time and sauerkraut only fit for Germans. There was no such thing as an express machine. I can still recall going into a shop to purchase sour cream only too be told that Australian shops only sold fresh cream and would never sell anything that was off! In many ways this was the twilight days of the old Australia, the new Australians as migrants were then called were  about to change everything.