Bit of an arty weekend, felt good walking around soaking up the sun and looking at pretty visuals. The Australian National Maritime Museum had a relaunch of a restored refugee boat to coincide with refugee week 2005.

The vessel, named Tu Do (Freedom) by the family it carried, eventually took the young mother, her husband and their three children from Vietnam, 6000km to a new life in Australia.

Taking photos and climbing on the boat and seeing it first hand, brought back some of the memories when I was about 5 years old, on a similar boat going on the same journey. Things are smaller than I remember them now, but Tu Do to me is just another boat. I think I was too young to be affected by the horrors of the high seas, pirates, lack of food and water. I don’t know if anyone had died on our boat. I just know from my dad that we made it to Pulau Bidong in Malaysia and we stayed there for 20 months. Our boat number was PB 792 and we arrived in Australia on the 15th February 1985.
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Chalk the Walk was also happening on the Pyrmont walk bridge. This was my favourite piece. Finally went to see this year’s PRIMAVERA.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Happenings, Imagery.