Page 53 - Willi Distel Diary

Proofread for easier reading. Willi wrote this page in English himself.

From Perth to Melbourne on the Karoola The day after I left my shop, my brother Alfons arrived in Western Australia, and I had hoped to get him into the business with me; but I soon found that this was hard. We tried it for a month, and after that we decided to go over to Melbourne and try our luck there. The McShanin family gave us every possible help, and on the last Saturday in January 1930 we sailed from Fremantle on the Karoola. It was quite a nice trip, and it would have been better still if we had not worried about work. We made friends, played chess, and paid a little court to a lonely girl. A countryman wanted to help us find work, but failed. There was Albany, where the boat stopped for half an hour, and then Adelaide - a very nice town with broad streets, where we had nine and a half hours and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We reached Melbourne the following Saturday. The first thing we did was look for a boarding house, which we found in Brunswick. On Monday we started looking for work; after three days I got a shop, but Alfons's position was almost hopeless.

Places: Perth, Western Australia, Fremantle, Albany, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brunswick

Interesting facts

Going east by sea. Before air travel, the usual way between Perth and the eastern states was by coastal steamer, a voyage of several days rounding the Great Australian Bight. Fremantle is the port of Perth, where the ship began.
The Karoola. The Karoola was a coastal passenger steamer, one of the vessels that linked Australia's far-flung ports in the days before air travel.
Albany's brief stop. Albany, on the deep natural harbour of King George Sound, was Western Australia's first town and long its main port of call - historically the last Australian land that ships bound overseas would see, and here just a half-hour halt.
Adelaide's broad streets. Adelaide was laid out in the 1830s by Colonel William Light on a spacious grid of wide streets ringed by parkland, which is why its broad, orderly avenues struck Willi so favourably.