17/05/15 - Bundaberg Qld

Made a day trip to Bundaberg where I photographed several war memorial sites for Monuments Australia, visited the RSL to photograph this clock dedicated to  the 47th Batallion.

 

In pride of place in the foyer was a large model of the MV Oranje, a Dutch luxury liner built in 1939 for the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) route. At the outbreak of the war in Europe it was stuck in Surabaya where it spent a year. It was then loaned to the Australian Govt as a hospital ship and spent the war ferrying wounded Australian troops and repatriating them at the end of the war.

The model was built by a Dutchman living in Bundaberg, he worked on the building of the Oranje as a shipwright before the war and came out to Australia as a migrant after the war.

The reason the model struck a chord with me was that I would watch this ship come past when I was a young lad fishing in the North Sea Canal that links Amsterdam with the North Sea.


http://www.news-mail.com.au/news/model-recalls-ships-rich-history/2024050/

Bundaberg was the home town of Bert Hinkler, an aviation pioneer, and there are several memorials to him in Bundaberg as well as a Bert Hinkler Aviation Museum.