Archive for February, 2008
Schools will soon get ANZAC lifeboat templates
Our photos show the prototype cardboard template and the mock-up lifeboat we are working on with Visyboard in Wingfield.
Three thousand lifeboat templates will be delivered to schools in Adelaide and some regional centres in special packs with instructions and information about ANZAC Light on the Water on April 24.
Students will make their own boats for the ANZAC Eve tribute to the merchant seamen who rowed out troops ashore at Gallipoli in 1915.
Thousands of families are expected to pack Queens Wharf in Port Adelaide for the event which will open with a one hour Ceilidh Music Concert by SA Pipes and Drums.
2 commentsA woman’s touch for ANZAC Eve
The Reverend Ali Wurm, who will officiate at the 2008 ANZAC Light on the Water commemoration on the Port River, is the parish priest of a Semaphore church that was built 35 years before the Gallipoli campaign.
There is an unusual link to the Gallipoli lifeboats landing because many parishioners say the wooden ceiling of St Bede’s reminds them of being in a boat.
School students and families will launch several hundred candle-lit cardboard lifeboats from the Queens Wharf pontoons in a moving tribute to the merchant seamen who rowed our troops ashore in ships’ lifeboats on April 25, 1915.
No commentsUK promotion for Light on the Water
South Australia is the first Australian state to be featured on a special Anzac Day 2008 page on the UK Vindicatrix Association website. Click here to visit.
A story to touch your heart
Here is a story to touch the hearts of Vindi Boys, their families and visitors to our website.
Heather Chapman from Charters Towers in North Queensland contacted me late last year by phone to tell me about her brother, Vindi Boy Roger Jewson. I relayed her story to Bill and Shirley Davis who run the Vindi website in Queensland, who were off to the WA Reunion at the time.
They contacted the Queensland branch secretary, Kimmy, who then got in touch with Heather:
Kimmy says:
Heather Chapman is Vindi Boy Roger’s sister and I have spoken to her on the phone. She told me she was collecting a Vindi Shirt as a surprise Christmas present for Roger.
Roger talks a lot about the Vindicatrix and the days he spent at sea. Heather said that unfortunately, he always leaves the dates out.
The doctor said they have done all they can for his cancer but he does not show any improvement. He now weighs only 41 kgs. Roger is a widower with no children and lives on his own in Townsville.
No commentsPipes and drums on ANZAC Eve
To mark the start of ANZAC Light on the Water 2008 the South Australian Pipes and Drums band will present a one-hour concert in Lighthouse Square Port Adelaide at 6 pm on April 24.
Without a doubt they are South Australia’s most versatile and sought after pipe band.
The South Australian Pipes and Drums came into being in April 2003 in response to an invitation from the Director of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo to perform at the Tattoo in August of that year.
The band was formed from very experienced pipers and drummers who accepted the invitation and embarked on the rather daunting challenge of training and equipping for the task ahead.
No commentsRoyal Navy sub an awesome sight
Although she’s four years late and a massive £900 million over budget, the Royal Navy’s super-sub HMS Astute is an awesome sight.
More complex than the space shuttle, and able to circumnavigate the globe without surfacing, the 7,400-ton monster is the largest and deadliest hunter-killer submarine ever built.
As long as a football pitch, at 318 ft (97 metres) and as wide as four double-decker buses, HMS Astute is a third longer than any sub which has gone before.
Her nuclear-powered engine will propel her through the water at more than 20 knots, yet the UK’s first stealth sub makes less noise than a baby dolphin, making her as good as undetectable by enemy ships.
Astute’s sonar is so advanced that if she was lying in the English Channel she would be able to detect ships leaving New York harbour 3,000 nautical miles (5550km) away.
The nuclear reactor will never need refuelling, and with an ability to make oxygen and drinking water out of sea water, the sub could stay underwater for its entire 25-year life span were it not for the needs of the crew.
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