Australia with Love

It has been a very long time since Pam Forbes and I have been able to sit down, just the two of us, and have a chat. It had been over 40 years!

Pam and her husband, Gus, came from Victoria, BC to Tacoma for a wedding on September 14th. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to return her Australian photo albums which she'd loaned me over a year ago. Scott and I had dinner with Pam and Gus last year, but this was a special visit. Scott wasn't up for the trip to Tacoma and Gus was kind enough just to let us reminisce by ourselves. I realized after the fact that this really was the first time we'd been alone in over 40 years.

Forty-four years ago, Pam and I sailed away from the pier in Vancouver, BC (on a boat, not the plane in the picture) for adventures on the high seas, Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand ending our voyage in Sydney, Australia. We both had work visas and planned to stay as long as our heads, hearts and bank accounts could afford. We also talked about continuing our trek around the world, but our hearts won out and we both came home with Australian blokes (not the two in the picture; that's another story). Pam married hers, but I shied away and went on to other adventures of the heart.

Last Saturday we poured over the photo albums together laughing and talking about the crazy things we did alone and with the other young, single women who populated our flat (apartment) at one time or another. Pam reminded me looking at one photo that both Sharon and Charlotte were wearing my clothes.We were all about the same size: tall, slender and definitely into clothes swapping. (There were also a couple exchanges of men friends, as I recall).

One of these days, I will get around to writing my Australian memoir, From Australia with Love. Pam's photos, of which I made some copies, will definitely help to dust the cobwebs from my memories and bring back those wild and crazy days from so long ago. No, we didn't have much luck lifting the rock we found on our bus-camping tour of the continent, but we tried. We were game for just about anything. :-)

Sydney, Australia's Silver Spade

Lounge lights casting a blue hue. Women in cocktail dresses and long gowns. Elbow length gloves. Updos. Men in dapper suits. Candle-lit tables. The flick of lighters igniting cigarettes. A smoky haze. Anticipation - a  star would be taking the stage.

That's the way I remember the Silver Spade Lounge in the Chevron Hotel, King's Cross, Sydney - 1969. It was my job, at least one evening a week, to take bookings for the lounge as part of my position as a banquet sales officer for the hotel. This was all brought back to mind while reading letters I wrote home over the 18 months I spent in Australia between 1969 and 1970.    

I bumped into Tiny Tim one day in the hallway of the hotel and remembered thinking, a face only a mother could love - and his wife, Miss Vicki, of course! Other stars who appeared while I worked there included Paul Anka, Buddy Greco, Robert Goulet, Engelbert Humperdinck, Phyllis Diller, Jack Jones, Dennis Day, and Jose Feliciano. Can you match the names with the pictures, or are you just too darn young?

BonnieKingPhotography.com

Tramp Steamer???

My husband, Scott, does tend to embellish when telling stories. He was given the opportunity this past week when my grandniece, Dori, came to help us paint his recording studio.
 

I had taught my first Memoir Writing class at the Puyallup Senior Center the Friday before, which led to a discussion with Dori of my mid-twenties Australian adventure. (I was in my mid-twenties; it wasn't the 1920's!)

June 28th, 1969, my best friend, Pam, (shown with her parents) and I left Vancouver, BC bound for Australia via Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. Our plan was to work in Australia and then continue our adventures in other parts of the world. The memoir I'm working on tells more of what really happened versus the letters I wrote home to my parents.

But, the story of our leaving Vancouver, according to my husband was, "Bonnie worked her way across the Pacific on a tramp steamer." In all innocence, Dori looked at me quizzically and asked, "Is that like a floating brothel?" Scott and I thought we were going to have convulsions, we laughed so hard. I may have done some wild and crazy things in my youth, but working on a floating brothel was NOT one of them. We explained to Dori our understanding of a tramp steamer, a ship that doesn't have a fixed schedule or ports of call. People can travel cheaply and see the world.

The photo shows my mom, dad, and younger brother, Jim, who was 12 at the time. My family and Pam's had taken us to Vancouver to see us off. It was a fun, on-board celebration until they had to disembark. We all said goodbye with the tears flowing, not knowing how long it would be before we saw each other again.

The picture of mom and me swaddled in plastic, (is that hat a fashion statement or what! I think it was more "or what?") shows the British P&O Liner, Orsova, in the background - not a tramp steamer.

It was the beginning of a wonderful adventure. BonnieKingPhotography.com