Travel was different in the 1950s

Cruising 1950s style was different than it is today. Well, maybe not today as the cruise ship industry is pretty well shut down, but in the recent past. Cruise ships of today offer trips to particular destinations, stopping along the way at places of interest where passengers can book excursions. When May and Harold Chambers embarked on the Otranto in December of 1954, it was a passenger ship not a prepackaged cruise liner. There were passengers of all stripes, including the immigrants on the lower decks who May wrote about. The airline industry was in its infancy and many people still relied on ships to get to their destination.

As tourists the Chambers had booked their trip through Thos Cook and Sons. Setting up an itinerary for their six-month long journey, including ships, ground transport and hotels must have been a challenge. It didn't always work. As May wrote on February 7: "Last Thurs we found Cooke had messed up our transportation and instead of the four day tour including Mont Grampia we had to make the journey by bus in one day leaving Adelaide 7:30 A.M. after coming in from Glenelg which, of course, meant getting up about 6 A.M."

Apart from hotel and transportation challenges, May and Harold seem to have been having a great time. They had met people aboard the Otranto who were traveling for reasons besides tourism. Among their shipboard friends were people who lived in Australia who kept in touch with the traveling couple after they disembarked. May wrote of times when she and Mrs. King, the wife in an Australian couple, would have lunch and sightsee while Harold and Mr. King went off to a cricket match.

In this way, they saw a different side of Australian lives than the average cruising tourist of the 21st century. It also made them privy to part of the economic scene of the country they were visiting. One of the guests at a dinner party at the King's that the Chambers attended was an expert for General Motors from Detroit, then living in Melbourne, as the corporation developed the Australian car, the Holden.

I was surprised that GM was doing business in Australia, in fact that Australia had a car manufacturing industry. I had somehow never thought of Australia being a part of '50s car culture until I looked up more information on the Holden. My research into this 1954/55 trip was taken me onto some interesting sidelines. I wonder what will be next?

Sources:

Chambers, M.C. Letter to Mrs. C.E.B. Cavanagh written February 7, 1955 from Melbourne

Chambers, M.C. Letter to Mrs. C.E.B. Cavanagh written February 16, 1955 SS Orion en route Melbourne to Sydney 

Holden information:  https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g31024982/gm-holden-commodore-monaro-cars-gallery/ 

Genealogy & Cricket History

Donald Bradman, Australian cricket player

Family history can lead to research about some strange peripheral subjects. In this case it was cricket. I knew that the notes in Harold's travel diary about test and scores somehow referred to the game of cricket but had no idea how. Then I looked further.

One of May's letters helped. From Adelaide on January 28, 1955, she wrote: "As a matter of fact we have also had to move which was a bit upsetting. The hotel Coops booked for us would only keep us for two nights. Most of the London Correspondents covering the Test Match are staying there. We had quite a time getting anywhere at all to stay and have finally ended up in a bungalow - beautiful garden landlady 78. She has converted part of the house into flats and rents out single rooms as well."

Test cricket must have been a big deal if newspapermen travelled all the way to Adelaide from London to cover it. Apparently, the matches were called test because they were played over 5 days thus testing the players (and the audience too, I would imagine). The matches were also international with the winning country ending up with bragging rights. In 1954-55 the Ashes series (don't ask) was played in Australia. The teams were from Australia and England, the test matches were actually 6 days long and there were 5 test matches in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and then back to Sydney. It all began November 26, 1954 in Brisbane.

Information about the third test match in Melbourne explained the note in Harold's travel diary marked January 5 which read in part, "England won 9:30 am" then some numbers I didn't understand, "Tyson shock", next line "Aussie quashed". He was following the test matches while on the ship and even complained at some points of the difficulty of finding the ongoing results.

The cryptic note "Tyson shock" was better explained by reading the write-up after the heading under Third Test of "Australia - second innings" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954%E2%80%9355_Ashes_series. It's so interesting to be able to place the information left behind by one individual into the context of a larger event, almost like walking in their shoes for a moment.

When it came to May and Harold's time in Adelaide, I would imagine that he was less upset to be ousted from the hotel than she was as she wrote to her daughter: "Confidentially up to today Dad has spent a great deal of time going from place to place in Adelaide also on the phone (we don't have one here) trying to get a ticket for today's test. He at last succeeded yesterday and has gone off this morning happily."

Also, it makes me wonder if he had purposely chosen to be in Adelaide at the time the city was hosting the test. I am starting to get a better picture of his character.

Sources:

Chambers, M.C. Letter to Mrs. C.E.B. Cavanagh written January 28, 1955 from Glenelg near Adelaide 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954%E2%80%9355_Ashes_series 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_cricket

Image:

 

Donald Bradman, Australian cricket player. photo from 30s or 40s

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=389513