{"id":1495,"date":"2012-06-09T09:39:30","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T09:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2012-06-09T09:39:30","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T09:39:30","slug":"ailsas-travel-photo-challenge-oceans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=1495","title":{"rendered":"Ailsa&#039;s travel photo challenge:  Oceans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Readers, before I begin, I want to thank Ailsa for her challenge and her ideas here:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/wheresmybackpack.com\/2012\/06\/08\/oceans\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/wheresmybackpack.com\/2012\/06\/08\/oceans\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oceans lap the Australian coastline on three sides.\u00a0 To the east there&#8217;s the Pacific;\u00a0 to the west, the Indian Ocean;\u00a0 to the south, the Southern Ocean.\u00a0 The northern coastline is lapped by seas not vast enough to be called ocean.\u00a0 They&#8217;re the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea, separating us from the islands of New Guinea and Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p>In 1941 ships crossed the Indian Ocean to take Australian troops to the Middle East and back home again. The photo below shows the Aquitania leaving Sydney Harbour in 1941 before she was painted battle grey.\u00a0 Before being assigned as a troopship the Aquitania had been a luxury liner in the Atlantic and before that she had served in the First World War.\u00a0 She was the last surviving four-funnelled ocean liner.\u00a0 The photo was possibly taken from the Queen Mary, another liner transformed into a troop carrier.\u00a0 There was a convoy of converted liners in Sydney Harbour in April 1941 taking on board thousands of soldiers.\u00a0 The Aquitania and the Queen Mary made a number of these journeys across the Indian Ocean and back.\u00a0 Of course, Sydney is on the east coast of Australia and the ships were heading west, so it was a long trip just to get out of Australian waters, let alone across the Indian Ocean.\u00a0 My mother told me that my father went on the Queen Mary, and his service record tells me he left Sydney on 1st September 1941 and arrived in the Middle East on 25th September.\u00a0 About three weeks at sea.\u00a0 On the ocean.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1498\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1498\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/worth.id.au\/wish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/aquitania_resized.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1498\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/worth.id.au\/wish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/aquitania_resized.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"699\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/aquitania_resized.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/aquitania_resized-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/aquitania_resized-768x537.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1498\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aquitania, 1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readers, before I begin, I want to thank Ailsa for her challenge and her ideas here:\u00a0 http:\/\/wheresmybackpack.com\/2012\/06\/08\/oceans\/ Oceans lap the Australian coastline on three sides.\u00a0 To the east there&#8217;s the Pacific;\u00a0 to the west, the Indian Ocean;\u00a0 to the south, the Southern Ocean.\u00a0 The northern coastline is lapped by seas not vast enough to be &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=1495\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ailsa&#039;s travel photo challenge:  Oceans&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[4,5,107,6,7,8,10],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwii","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-aquitania","tag-black-white","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaweek2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}