*Adelaide Epiphany at South Australia Maritime Museum*
While I’m tempted to dive into a whole soliloquy about my time in Adelaide, specifically the Port Adelaide/Semaphore area, I’m overwhelmed by a tumult of conflicting emotions. I stayed in a beautiful location, right on the marina, with a pleasant walk to a magnificent pier filled with history and attractions. There was live music at the “Communist Workers Club”—not some cosplay version of communism, but a real community with a diligent volunteer ethos, only outmatched by their exceptional booking of live bands. Then there was the RSL (Retired Service Legion), steeped in its own history, where I met fantastically friendly folks, including a brewmaster/piano player I admired—not only for his perfect pints, with proceeds going to a specific veterans’ charity—but for his unique honky-tonk/ragtime-classical piano playing, all done jauntily with a magnificent mustache.
The main street seemed like it was straight out of a movie—an alternate universe version of Iowa, except right there on the ocean, with high façade shops where a gunslinger wouldn’t feel out of place. Yet, just around the corner, there were the usual strip malls, supermarkets, and shopping plazas where I’d wander into a massage shop run by Vietnamese ladies who would walk on my back.
However, this is about the South Australia Maritime Museum, located in a historic quarter of the city. The area had fallen into disrepair but had recently been revitalized. There were several museums nearby, and if I had been more together, I would have visited them all. But I wasn’t—my mind, body, and emotions were all in the midst of a complete breakdown.
As for the museum: I kept my pocket-sized robot-captured device tucked away, so this post serves mostly as a placeholder for a few oddments I spotted. I was particularly moved by the exhibits showing the different cabins and bunks used to transport emigrants, mostly from the British Isles but significantly from Germanic-areas as well, down to this planned city of Adelaide. In other words, this report is hardly useful, nevertheless:
Let’s go:
South Australia Maritime Museum map: https://goo.gl/maps/rAEAZxPqDmha3bZz8
South Australia Maritime Museum web: https://maritime.history.sa.gov.au/
Various mini-photo collections:
Items inside the museum
The museum’s cabins spanned different eras, from the early days when passengers slept on angled planks like produce on a market shelf, with stuffed burlap bags for mattresses, small shelves for personal items, and troughs at the end for—well, I won’t speculate. The quarters evolved into tidy rooms with bunk beds, and eventually into slightly more modern state rooms, still sparse and windowless but more hygienic.
These views, combined with a full sailboat exhibit in the very tidy museum—where I was the only patron aside from someone I glimpsed rushing through—offered glimpses into the colony’s early days. The sailboat transported goods between ports, and teenage boys labored on these rough journeys, often working under indentured servitude. I saw the tiny quarters where they would have slept and thought about the treacherous tasks they performed in rough seas.
It made me wonder: *What’s the point of all this? Why did people make these long trips? Why do people work so hard under terrible conditions?* Some answers are obvious, and yet, maybe I am wondering because I found myself basically homeless (soon to be fully so) in a state of flux and confusion about my usefulness to humanity and myself :(
Details of the passage
I’ve included a few photos from around the museum and a poem I wrote onsite called *Adelaide Epiphany*, reflecting on all of the above. I hope you read it carefully, but not too carefully, and that it gives you a sense of the place—since there are only a few snapshots to accompany my field notes.
Adelaide Epiphany
The epiphany
Pulls slow
From Adelaide
A dock besides the
Submarine factory
Points known to
Several insurers, captains, commodores and
Various stevedores
Jetty of rocks to protect the waves
From collisions
And dolphins from lines
Who’s aboard known
To pursers if those exists
Staterooms piled above tubes
And barrels
And hidden tenures inside
Now floats over weeks “over 100 here alone”
Why didn’t they stop trying so hard?
What Britain so bad?
Apparently the squalor, the stench paled to the
Repression and cacophony of useless structures
A clean vessel would reveal
The true ambitions of
Personal intrigue
And desire
Stolen cloth vagaries of laws
And kings -
Numbered and counted
In a system tended like a
Sloppy bonfire by
Stewards of ridiculous secrets
Unneeded
Signs, in & around
So, all of this is to say: I went to a museum. It was tidy, well-appointed, and very quiet. And I thought a lot about how we don’t always bloom where we’re planted—despite what a fridge magnet might say. We go places, we take risks, we do what we can to improve our station in life, if we can. However treacherous, unhygienic, risky, dirty, or unpleasant it may be. Do we do it for money? For self-worth? For a sense of purpose? Or do we do it just to do it? Gosh i was having a full-on crisis, i am sometimes better now
So, we go on. Or do we? Or how do we anyhow?
Curiosities abounding
Details in the neighbourhood
Bonus: Since we’re here, a few more notes about Adelaide (which belong elsewhere but might never happen):
While other Australian cities were founded by exported convicts, mining conglomerates, or import/export ventures exploiting indigenous populations and the continent’s natural resources, Adelaide was different—a rigorously planned city, aspiring to attract middle-class (yes, white and Protestant) families. While other Australians often deride it as “the city of churches,” I didn’t feel that vibe at all. Instead, I found live music, festivals, and an ethnically diverse population. I recall eating dim sum at a tiny back table in a busy restaurant, and making friends from Sweden, Indonesia, and beyond. Meanwhile others in their bright “tradie” vests and weathered faces do roughneck jobs, like friends who worked in Darwin on oil rigs, diving deep or toiling in the jungle for weeks on end, only to spend their hard-earned money on booze and gambling.
Meta Note: actual visit Nov. 2015, tidied and published Aug-Sept 2022
Field Notes regarding exhibit/museum/gallery/garden dossiers:
These posts, such as they are, are for recollection, inspiration, reference and possible remixing. I say this to remind myself these round-ups are not meant to be textbooks, comprehensive guides, analysis – critical or otherwise, or a “master’s thesis”. So much goodness in these exhibits – whether grand and well-funded museums or (my favourite) grassroots operations, or even spontaneous art around the edges in unexpected circumstances – that i enjoy archiving.
Also noting often, museums have a “no photo” policy and of course, art and artifacts are best experienced in-person, or with fine reproductions at least, so consider my humble dossirs as a stand-in, in the meanwhile, with a special eye to shut-ins and other who have a hard time getting out and about.
As such, these round-ups will be lightly annotated with usually (just) the name of the museum, possible circumstance and/or approximate date of the visit, possible link to museum website and or map for your reference and then a flow of photos.
I almost always buy museum exhibit books, as well as many other items from the gift shop, so if you have any specific questions about any of the pieces displayed, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to add some additional colour commentary – no guarantees.
