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Welcome to the S. S. Australis Homepage. |
This site is for ex-crew and passengers and anyone else with an interest in S. S. America\Australis\American Star.
Greetings.
Welcome to my website, which I have built in order to re-unite as many ex-crew and passengers
as possible. My love of this great cruise ship stems from when I worked on her
as the ships masseur\gym instructor between the years of 1974-`77. I made eight
trips around the world and eleven South Pacific cruises,
during the first couple of trips the ship called into Las Palmas in the Canary
Islands and then Cape Town, South Africa before reaching Fremantle, Western
Australia, and then carrying on to Melbourne and Sydney. On the third trip we
sailed for the Greek Island of Crete. The Suez Canal had just been re-opened
and we were able to traverse the Canal travelling southbound for Australia.
Many passengers went on a day trip to Cairo to see the Pyramids, the Sphinx
and have their ears nibbled by camels in the bazaars.
Mo Horsburh and I had permission
to go on one of the trips later on in the year and I can tell you it was really
well worth it. The next port of call was Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, not
one of my favourite places in the world as I always remember a lot of the locals
had vicious looking monkeys on leads, but quite an experience anyway. After
leaving Sydney it was on to Auckland, New Zealand-one of my favourite ports
which still brings back great memories. I have always been interested in rock
music and I used to listen to the radio in most ports, during one trip I decided
to record an audio tape of one of the stations to listen to in my cabin, to
this day I still have that tape and listen to it on a regular basis. The station
was called "Hauraki" and it still exists today. Thanks to the internet and an
ex-passenger I now know the history of the station and even what the disc jockey
looked like-many thanks go out to Steve
Mulliss. The northbound
journey would take us to Fiji in the South Pacific, and then a long haul across
the Pacific ocean to Acapulco, Mexico where most people would spend far too
much money in the harbourside market before heading up to the hotel where people
would jump off a high cliff into the sea, and they called that entertainment!!
Heading off south would then take us to the Panama Canal and the city of Panama,
where on one trip Mo nearly got me into a fight with a boxer when he told him
that I was the boxing champ from the ship, I'm still keeping a low profile now
just in case!! Through the Canal and on to either the Bahamas, Curacao, Jamaica
or Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I fell in love with this particular part of Florida
and have been going back there ever since, watching this city grow up into one
of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. One last place we used to
go to was Rotterdam in the Netherlands, not a very interesting city really after
visiting so many beautiful ports.
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My brother Ray Ironside and sister Shirley worked on the Queen Frederica
and the Amerikanis from 1968 to May 1969. Ray also worked on the Australis
from April 1971-April `73, and again from November 1973-November 1974.
After which he worked on the Patris from November to December `74. You
can contact Ray on the e-mail link below:
Ray Ironside. |
I would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this site, namely Doug Griffiths,
Darren Byrne, Steve Mulliss, Bill Lee, Steve Tacey, Bill Miller, Nick
Goad, Dan Trachtenberg, Peter Knego, Ken Rowlinson, Kirsten Hawkes and
of course to everyone who has visited the site in the past four years.
A special thanks goes out to my good friend Mo Horsburgh for sending
all those screaming kids down to the "C" deck swimming pool in the afternoons
back on the ship.
