Mossel Bay - Page 9

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Africa; Published: 28 February 2026; Hits: 1721

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Mossei Bay was the only port at which the ship anchored off-shore and we used the ships boats to 'tender in'.

The ship, off-shore

This is a nice little port town with several old sandstone buildings, reminiscent of colonial Sydney. Different races seem to live in harmony. Most people speak English or, presumably, Afrikaans.

There are helpful locals about town welcoming and assisting tourists from the ship. A highlight is the maritime museum that has a full-scale replica of the Caravel used by Bartolomeu Dias to discover the sea route around the southern tip of Africa in 1488. This replica sailed from Lisbon on November 8, 1987, arriving at Mossel Bay on February 3, 1988, close to Australia's bicentenary (January 26, 1988) marking the 500th anniversary of the original voyage.

Full-scale replica of the Bartolomeu Dias Caravel

There were a lot of other interesting exhibits, as I have already said, all bi-lingual - English and Afrikaans

In this tidy town, almost everything still works.

Yet, as elsewhere, the railway station is in ruins.

Rusty rails, Nature taking over, station building abandoned

To see more photos of Mossel Bay click on the image above

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Travel

Hong Kong and Shenzhen China

Following our Japan trip in May 2017 we all returned to Hong Kong, after which Craig and Sonia headed home and Wendy and I headed to Shenzhen in China.

I have mentioned both these locations as a result of previous travels. They form what is effectively a single conurbation divided by the Hong Kong/Mainland border and this line also divides the population economically and in terms of population density.

These days there is a great deal of two way traffic between the two. It's very easy if one has the appropriate passes; and just a little less so for foreign tourists like us. Australians don't need a visa to Hong Kong but do need one to go into China unless flying through and stopping at certain locations for less than 72 hours. Getting a visa requires a visit to the Chinese consulate at home or sitting around in a reception room on the Hong Kong side of the border, for about an hour in a ticket-queue, waiting for a (less expensive) temporary visa to be issued.

With documents in hand it's no more difficult than walking from one metro platform to the next, a five minute walk, interrupted in this case by queues at the immigration desks. Both metros are world class and very similar, with the metro on the Chinese side a little more modern. It's also considerably less expensive. From here you can also take a very fast train to Guangzhou (see our recent visit there on this website) and from there to other major cities in China.

Fiction, Recollections & News

My Art and Artists

One recreation that I find very absorbing is drawing and painting.

Having once been married to an exceptionally talented artist (now Brenda Chat) I do not pretend great skill or insight.

I always drew and painted but living with Brenda was like someone who has just mastered ‘chopsticks’ on the piano being confronted by Mozart.

Our daughter Emily has inherited or acquired some of her mother’s skill and talent.

Emily and I once attended life classes together and I am awed by her talent too. One of her drawings hangs behind me as I write. It is a wonderful pencil study of a life class nude.

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field.

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world. Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures? In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

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