Interesting Interlude

About the Book

left P&O and joined a small trading company Burns Philp, transporting goods for their trading stores and loading copra and cocoa for the return voyage to Australia

    A number of the ports were anchorages.  To service these the ships carried motorboats and surfboats.  Often in order to cater for the heavier cargo items it was necessary to build rafts of the surfboats.

    One voyage the ship was delayed at Lae as the wharves at the ports of Lae and Madang were occupied.  On that occasion I had the chance to visit and photograph the gold mining operations at Bulolo.  At this location there was a bucket dredging operation undertaken by a dredger weighing 2,500 tons that had been air freighted from a location close to Lae by the Junkers G31 aircraft in 1930.

    Aside from the seafaring side of my background, there was the life experienced by my wife to be.  She was resident on the small Island of Samarai, which could be walked around in half an hour and details parts of her life on the island and others she visited in the Luisiade Islands..  This small Island at that time had 280 Europeans and a fluid population of about 2,000 Islanders resident upon or visiting it from the Islands close by.

    Upon returning to Sydney after my leave I joined ‘Tulagi’ a ship, which traded around Norfolk, Tanna, New Hebrides( Vanuatau) and the Solomon Islands.  The sea around Norfolk Island was frequently severely adverse and the ship had to anchor off the Island to await a lull in the weather.  To the Authorities it was an ideal location for a penal settlement isolated in the Tasman Sea.

    After leaving Norfolk Island the vessel called to Tanna Island with its active volcano on one side.  Thereafter the vessel proceeded to Port Villa and Espiritu Santo ports in the New Hebrides Islands (Vanuatu).  Leaving these Islands the vessel progressed to the Solomon Islands with Guadalcanal the main Island Yandina the Lever Brothers headquaters.  Then the plantation anchorages before arriving at the former German Port of Kieta.

    Leaving Kieta the ship loaded logs at Allardyce.  Leaving here the ship rode out a cyclone before returning to Sydney.

About the Author

John Vint was born in Bombay India and educated in India and at Brighton College, before pre-sea training on HMS Worcester.  He joined P&O as an apprentice and served on cargo and passenger ships around the world, leaving to live in Australia after passing his Master’s Certificate.  Here he joined Burns Philp trading around Papua New Guinea and the Solomon, New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Norfolk Islands.  On leaving the sea, he was a Pilot/Wharf Manager in Western Australia before returning to UK in 1973.  Posts as Marine Superintendent in Iran and New York followed and then he was employed as a Marine Surveyor/Consultant by a London company initially in Hong Kong, later London, before setting up his own business travelling worldwide.  Now retired he lives in Sussex