It was a time when JFK had not yet been immortalised, when a silvery shimmer called Marilyn Monroe had not yet learned the words to "Happy birthday, Mr. President" and a time when the Beatles were still nothing more than a quaint scouse quartet.

I was barely twenty and my first duty as a Cadet Purser was to stand-by the pride of Canadian Pacific Steamships - the luxury liner "Empress of Canada" berthed in Liverpool's Gladstone Dock. Fresh-faced and showing no signs of my usual shyness, I was determined to do some living without parental guidance and, at the same time, prove to myself that there was more to life than watching my beloved 'Spurs play every alternate Saturday!

I never really succeeded. Eight years later my last trip as Third Purser of the Shaw Savill liner "Southern Cross" found me, as it still does now, pining for the swirling atmosphere of a White Hart Lane crowd and the crack of a raucous soccer rattle. In between however, my life has not been a total loss. It has been enriched by experiences that few could have dreamed of and some that I frankly could have done without.

When I first started, a Purser was very much a jack-of-all-trades and perceived by many to be master of all. We had to be an entertainer, an accountant, a ball-room dancer, a bingo caller, a tour adviser, an immigration officer, a post-office clerk, a money changer and an expert on everything including how much to tip the bedroom steward. Above all, we were expected to be charming - especially where the young ladies were concerned. We were part of the price of an oceal-liner ticket, a gigolo with salt in our veins, the epitome of old-fashioned romanticism and we were sufficiently young and eager not to disappoint.

We lived for the day. We smoked and drank to excess. We entertained every night, never got enough sleep and tried to recuperate by missing lunch. The two day turnaround in Montreal and the four in Liverpool was enough to recharge our flagging batteries. We were indestructible.

We all got on well with each other. Occasionally we had our differences. If we fancied the same girl,for example, the toss of a coin would determine who would have wooing rights. I lost once, George Furber didn't; but I still got the chance to ‘chat up’ Claudia Bolton because George had fallen foul of the Second Purser, was forbidden to fraternise with passengers for a couple of nights and I was given an unexpected licence to thrill in the Empress Room.

I must have impressed. Claudia invited me home to meet her parents and I celebrated my 21st birthday in Preston.

Her father had made his fortune in green-grocering and I spent the afternoon of my birthday in his generous company watching Preston North End, with the great Tom Finney at centre-forward, beat Bury. Alas, I could only manage a scoreless draw with his daughter in the evening!

The incidents that happened on board were the stuff you told your own grandchildren and then only after they were old enough to understand without parental guidance.

Some were funny, some sad and some gigglingly outrageous. Like the time when an overweight passenger, a little unstable from liquor, got stuck between two bar stools that had been bolted to the deck for safety reasons. It took a sober engineer armed with a stout spanner half an hour to prise our large friend from the jaws of his own excesses. Then there was the time when a middle-aged passenger got locked out of the cabin he shared with a young Lothario and had to spend the night in the hospital section. He was so impressed he bought the company (!) a round of drinks and then refused to move from his sanitised quarters!

In those heady days everything was comical and naturally, my surname was the butt of many a joke; but it was my christian name that proved invaluable when trying to impress the opposite gender on the dance floor.

Laughter has always been the perfect ice-breaker and I needed all the help I could muster to overcome my shyness. Alcohol helped, but it seemed pointless performing memorable acts if one couldn't recall them the following day. So I made fun of my given name.

Of course, it all had to be done with a certain amount of style and sotto-voce panache. Once the reluctant maiden had been dragged from the clutches of her match-making mother (they were commonly referred to as Lucifers), I would introduce myself with: "Hi, I'm Randolph!" Then very coyly, "Randy for short...... but not for long!"

On one occasion the reluctant maiden whispered huskily in my ear: "That's allright, my name's Virginia!" But that too wasn't for long!

Another ice-breaker saw me appear gauche and stumbly when attempting to dance with a new `prospect'. "Forgive me," I'd say with due humility and conviction. "But I've just washed my feet and I can't do a thing with them!"

It was the misuse of the Chief Purser's name, however, that became the classic running joke. The incident occured when a passenger named Benjamin Arrolfend decided he couldn't share a cabin with someone who used the wash-basin for purposes unbecoming a wash-basin and demanded a change. Alas, except for the brig (and the hospital), the "full house" sign had already been posted. Mr. Arrolfend thereupon insisted he see the "big chief". The "big chief" unfortunately had no interest in seeing him. Jean-Baptiste de Villeneuve-Porter loathed passengers. He made a profession of avoiding them. How he ever made it to the top of the tree was a mystery that will long live in the annals of Merchant Navy history. But Mr. Arrolfend was adamant and history meant nothing to him. We pointed to a sign alongside the Chief Purser's office that read "AUSTRALIAN WALNUT" and requested he wait under it.

Mr. Arrolfend waited, and waited....and waited some more. He was a patient man. The Chief Purser, sensing something was amiss, hid behind his locked ante-room. Mr. Arrolfend would occasionally steal a glimpse inside the office, then return to stand under the "AUSTRALIAN WALNUT" sign.

Eventually, Mr. Arrolfend appeared to give up. He disappeared into one of the alleyways facing our office. But he was no fool, for as soon as the Chief Purser ventured into the open Mr. Arrolfend was onto him in a flash.

Jean-Baptiste de Villeneuve-Porter realising danger was imminent sped down the opposite alleyway, pursued by a huffing and puffing Mr. Arrolfend pleading: "Mr. Walnut! Mr. Walnut! Wait for me. I only want to change my cabin. Mr. Walnut!"

The story goes that in the early 60s a three-man film crew from the USA descended on Pitcairn Island to shoot a documentary on the lives of the inhabitants. Being off the beaten track, the only mode of transport from America was via any cargo ship willing to call on the island on its way to either Australia or New Zealand. Similarly there was no regular service OFF the island, so the film crew had arranged for the same ship to pick them up two months later on its return trip.

Fully conscious of the deprivations they would incur, the film crew had decided to carry sizeable supplies of sun-cream, mosquito repellent and the basic necessities of cigarettes and ‘refreshments’.

Pitcairn Islanders are very strict Seventh Day Adventists. And Seventh Day Adventists don’t drink anything stronger than coconut milk. However, even before the ship had anchored off the island, the Pitcairners had got wind of the type of refreshments the film crew had planned to import.

On arrival off Adamstown - Pitcairn’s main metropolis - the cargo ship was greeted by the usual flotilla of longboats filled with islanders chanting the latest Polynesian chart buster. An ocean swell had developed and off-loading from the big ship had become that little bit trickier. It was nothing the islanders couldn’t handle, however. They had encountered worse manning their fishing nets or even crossing for day trips to the uninhabited atolls of Henderson, Ducie and Oeno.

As was their wont, the locals, knowing each other’s signals when offloading cargo, took control of the ship’s cranes.

The film crew were lowered first in a bosun’s chair. The manoeuvre was duly recorded on film. Off came the odds and sods the islanders had been waiting months for. They had become adept at offloading heavy machinery and even large generators. On this occasion, however, nothing more delicate than a few bicycles and items of furniture were lowered.

Next came the film crews’ personal effects. The suitcases were carefully stacked in a safe part of the leading boat as the worsening seas generated huge swells against the ship’s side. One of the cinematographers was sick on entering the heaving boat.

As the morning’s breakfast became the screeching focus of swarming seagulls, the four wooden crates marked ‘Spare Batteries’ were being readied for lowering.

It was then Providence decided to take charge of proceedings. The crane operator had been eating a plate of chips supplied by the ship’s cook and his fingers were on the slippery side. As his hand reached for the control lever, it slipped and accidentally dislodged the wrong one. The crates were sent hurtling uncontrollably seawards.

As they spiralled downwards, the lead boat, caught on the tip of a swell, was jerked upwards and smashed against the ship’s side at the same time as the crates reached the same spot. Dead heat.

The pale brown contents of the batteries dribbled out, reeking of hops and malt.

The wind whistled aimlessly. The lonely steel hawser epileptically banged a solitary tattoo against the steel of the ship.

The film crew could only sit and swear.

The s.s. Gothic was very much like any other ship that has plied the high seas for umpteen years. A passenger-cargo ship on a regular U.K.-New Zealand run, she was showing signs of maritime dementia when I boarded her at London’s Royal Albert Docks for my first stint as a fully-fledged Purser. I was only 23 at the time, one of the youngest Pursers Shaw Savill had employed. I have always been naturally iconoclastic and even in those early days I knew my rapid promotion was due not because of any merit on my part but because I had fallen foul of authority again, and my new posting was purely a question of ‘out of sight out of mind’.

The London docks are a depressing sight at the best of times but on that dreary, drizzly afternoon in the winter of 1963 they held as much charm as a football supporter sprawled in a city gutter after his favourite team has lost. The store houses looked as dark and derelict as anything Dickens had described in the middle of the 19th century. Rampant rats competed with screeching seagulls and flea-infested tabbies for every scrap of food. Pigeons perched on rafters overlooked the scene. Protected from the rain by overhanging eaves, they preened themselves, their heads darting feverishly like a clutch of maiden aunts arguing over last Sunday’s sermon.

It was slightly more cheerful on board. The Gothic was one of the ‘Ic” class of vessels, mostly all freighters, that carried cargo between either Australia or New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The European Union was still a pipe dream and trade between Commonwealth countries was very much alive.

The Gothic was different to others in her class, however. She made three trips per year to New Zealand carrying 100 or so passengers between London and either Wellington or Auckland. She would then ply the Kiwi coast for two months, doing her bit for the balance of payments of both countries, before re-embarking the original passengers and any others who fancied a lazy trip back to London via the Panama Canal. Enroute she’d stop long enough to help the economy of the long-boated, postage-stamp-enriched, come-regardless-of-the-weather, I-can-carve-you-a-wooden-facsimile-of-any-tortoise-in-any-size-you-desire, named-either-Christian-or-Adams people of Pitcairn Island. The round trip usually took just under four months.

What set Gothic apart from other ships. however, was her commissioning in 1954 in the service of newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth II. Brittania, of course, had just been launched but her range was limited and the distances within the Pacific and Indian Oceans would have proved too challenging.

So Gothic was chosen. Her hull and superstructure were painted white, the interior stripped, the public rooms refurbished and the state-rooms spruced up to accommodate HM and HRH and an entourage that included ladies and gentlemen in waiting and a contingent of the Royal Marine’s Band. No expense was spared - even air-conditioning was installed to take the sting off the southern summer tropical heat.

When I joined the ship, the royal trappings had long disappeared. All that was left was a plaque screwed next to the Purser’s Bureau commemorating the occasion and a tape player that sounded remarkably healthy.

In addition, two public-room stewards had survived. Percy and Cecil were a most appealing couple and literally a pair. In retrospect, it would appear they’d signed the Official Secrets’ Act because whenever the subject of queens came up they’d always plead the fifth! They shared everything - holidays, cabin etc. In appearance, however, they couldn’t have been more dissimilar - Percy was short, dumpy, bespectacled, pasty-faced while Cecil was tall, urbane, clear-visioned and ruddy.

My cabin on the Gothic faced as far forward as you could get without stumbling over clove-hitches and anchor chains. It was directly underneath the bridge and I could hear the ringing of the telegraph everytime it sent messages to the engine room. Full ahead was music to my ears; it meant silence until the next port hove in sight. I had a view real estate agents would kill for. But it was a vista marred by unexpected tropical downpours, followed by choice words and a mad scramble for the window handle and mopping-up materials.

Directly below my cabin and extending the width of the ship, was the forward lounge, where afternoon tea was served and where tinkling the ivories was allowed if you could first locate the piano key. It was also home to the tape player and the venue for the interdenominational service every Sunday morning which I was expected to preside over - and me a lapsed altar server. Percy would help me choose the hymns and then accompany the congregation on the baby grand while Cecil turned the pages.

They did breach the Official Secrets Act once, however. I happened to mention to them I was planning to use the tape player - a handsome piece of furniture in rich red cedar - in a series of Sunday night concerts. That set them off side-glancing and ‘tut-tutting’ like two conspiratorial members of the Upper House.

“Shouldna tell you this!” Percy confessed in his quiet tremolo, appearing guilty while Cecil nodded in agreement.

“Yonder machine!” Immediately the word yonder told it all; only genteel folks use the word.

“It were a bugger even during Her Majesty’s voyage.” It was Cecil’s turn to confide, his speech pattern robust, direct.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, intrigued.

“Oh nowt at first.” This time it was unison. Tutti with perfect cadence.

After that, silence. Cecil put his finger to his lips to indicate he had said too much. Percy nodded the nod of one whose fearful eyes bespoke of declining years spent in the Tower ‘if they oottered another wor’’.

I was left to discover for myself.

I had always been a classical music buff. Ever since my grandfather played his Rigoletto 78s after dinner, much to the annoyance of my grandmother but to the delight of both my brother and I because it got us out of doing the washing up, I had fancied myself hosting a classical soiree. This opportunity would be the closest I’d ever come to fulfilling that ambition and I wasn’t about to let two shrugging-head-shaking doubters deter me.

Armed with a few seasons’ experience at the Royal Albert Hall Promenade Concerts and copious readings of programme notes from evenings spent at the Royal Festival Hall, I was familiar with the formula for recitalistic success. The ship’s music library of reel-to-reel tapes included the likes of von Karajan, van Cliburn, Beecham and Menuhin in a sundry collection of overtures, concertos and symphonies. I couldn’t fail.

The first Sunday Night Concert was an all Beethoven affair. It kicked off with the Leonora Overture, then the 3rd Piano Concerto and climaxed with the 5th Symphony. It was a knockout - the fifth with its rousing last movement always leaves you with a satisfied smugness and an elevated spirit. The sound, although not stereophonic, was as close to hi-fidelity as you could get in the 50s and quite superb. The passengers - all 6 of them - crowded round me, slapping me on the back, vying to be the first to buy me a drink. I had arrived as a musical host!

The second Sunday was just as thrilling. I mixed Tchaikovsy’s Pathetique with Weber’s Invitation to the Dance and Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Word had got around. I had an audience of 8 passengers and two stewardesses out of sight on the top step of the companionway.

The third Sunday saw Sandy the First Officer make an appearance. It was quite an achievement - Sandy was a hardened Beatles and Rolling Stone fan. The passengers had swollen to 23 plus the two hidden stewies.

For the occasion I brought out Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, the 1812 Overture and the love duet from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Programmatically wrong, I planned to end the concert with a bang by playing Tchaikowsky’s ode to Napoleonic folly.

Hector was admirable. The sweeping crescendos in the fifth movement, those little snippets of the Dies Irae - all poured out beautifully with ne’er a hint of distortion. Richard’s love duet was subtlety and romance at its most endearing - Flagstad was the ill-fated sop but the tenor’s name escapes me.

Only one word can explain Peter Ilych’s masterpiece - bombastic. The advancing canons boomed, the bells echoed, the double-basses descended to the depths of defeat and then......and then.....disaster.

A few minutes before it happened there had been a slight variation in pitch, as if a 78 needed winding up, but it was only momentary. Then it happened. First a static stab from the speakers, then silence and a whooshing sound.

I rushed to the player, lifted the heavy woodden lid and couldn’t believe my eyes. The machine was devouring the magnetic tape in an accelerating rivulet of brown ribbon. And relishing it. The speakers burped in paroxysms of delight.

I untangled the mess as quickly as I could and restarted the concert. But the magic had gone.

Afterwards, when the passengers had left the lounge I noticed Cecil and Percy tidying up. Looking very sheepish. As I approached, they averted their gaze.

“You knew about this,” I accused.

Silence.

“You could have stopped me from making a fool of myself!”

Percy shrugged his shoulders. Cecil continued emptying ashtrays.

Cecil finally muttered something I couldn’t hear.

“What? Speak up man!”

“It were the only thing left behind.....” one commenced.

“......obviously for a reason,” the other concluded.

Couldn’t get a word out of them after that.

It was the late 60s (1960s that is) when I took the first cautionary steps in what George Bernard Shaw described as ‘controlled disaster.’ I was living in Toronto, Ontario at the time and the nearest flying school was a few miles north at Buttonville.

It seemed only natural to take up flying. I was working in an airline environment and most of my colleagues already had licences. Colin had had his since the year dot, David boasted a helicopter endorsement and Chet owned a canvas-framed tail-dragger which he flew from a farmer’s field at every opportunity.

But I soon discovered that flying wasn’t as easy as it looked. I realised it was very much like learning to sing. If the perception was flawed from the beginning, it was always going to be that much more difficult to start from scratch. I started off at a disadvantage and learning became an ever-continuing effort to overcome my inadequacies.

The inadequacies were immense. For starters, I was acutely myopic. Astigmatism didn’t help. It affected my judgement of distance and there’s nothing more inadequate in a private pilot than one whose astigmatic short-sightedness clouds his orientation with landmarks.

The ground-school tuition was a breeze - it was basically an extension of our work in Flight Operations. Calculating ground speeds, the effects of cross-winds and drag on flight and executing a flight-plan were nothing compared to the reality of becoming airborne and learning to ‘control disaster’.

From the outset. my flying instructor was conscious of my failings and couldn’t have been more obtuse and uninterested if he tried. Which, of course, he did! Henri was a displaced Quebecer longing for the solitude of bleak and wind-swept Labrador. His inter-personal skills were as polished as a starving huskie chasing the scent of a wounded moose and conversations were restricted to a grunt, a nod or shake of the head followed by a soporific belch of stale garlic and mustard relish. His attitude was as bleak as his Gallic temper was short. The final straw occured one blustery winter’s morning when I called the control tower to be told cross-winds had forced the abandonment of flying operations. Henri phoned me at home a few minutes after the start of what I thought was an abandoned lesson, to insist I come out to the airport for the lesson he had not personally cancelled!

My second instructor turned out to be a Kiwi, although I mistook him for an Australian and initially greeted him with a ‘G’day mite!’ which he smilingly acknowledged and immediately corrected. This was pre-Paul Hogan and was probably the origin of this form of greeting! Kevin turned out a better teacher than M Henri. If anything, his diet was devoid of garlic over-kill and he had learnt the knack of linking more than one word of English and still make sense.

Finally the day arrived when he allowed me to fly my first solo flight. We had made the usual circuits followed by the usual touch and gos. I taxied to the end of the runway, he bade me farewell, shook my hand with a grip that silently telegraphed his justifiable lack of confidence in me and nonchalantly informed me I had better try flying solo now before I developed irretrievable faults in my technique!

So off I went, as exhilerated as I was nervous. I remember practically nothing of that first solo flight. It’s as if you’re programmed for the occasion. Everything is done by rote, your brain goes on automatic and all movements are orchestrated by a higher force. It is only when you’ve reached circuit altitude of 1000 feet and are heading on the downwind leg that you have enough time to clear your senses. Suddenly your legs turn to nerveless jelly, arms become as stiff as fishing rods and your voice gargles the most peculiar facsimile to tuneless opera you can muster. Nerves expending themselves in visible reaction.

I make it down, grateful the glide path did not include the power lines I’d had nightmares of entangling.

The tower controller and Kevin congratulate me. I have begun to cast off the mantle of some of my inadequacies!

I saunter over to my car, hypnotically entranced by the occasion. I close the car door, wiping a stray tear from my glasses.

GBS’s disaster has been controlled.

I suppose it all started because I was absolutely besotted with acting and singing. Psychiatrists would have a field day with me - something to do with deprivation as a child, not enough cuddles or affection in ‘ze formatif yearz’.

So when I hit Sydney in the late 70s, I first sat for my taxi-drivers licence because I’d been told that even a good actor had to eat and then I went in search of a theatrical agent. Instead I signed up with Tom Richards’ School of TV Acting in Brookvale.

From there I progressed to walk-on roles in Channel 10’s ‘Arcade’ and ‘Young Doctors’ with Delvene Delaney. Then came my big break - a rebellious priest in Elijah Moshinsky’s new production of The Australian Opera’s Boris Gudonov. This of course led to other roles in Rigoletto, Lucia de Lamermoor. Madama Butterfly etc. etc. Taxi-driving took a back seat for a little while, so to speak.

I also began taking singing lessons from an ex-Sun Aria winner and Australian Opera member called Kevin Mills. After a few months, struggling vainly to sing tenor arias, Kevin, in a fit of despair, suggested I continue my musical education with a piano teacher specialising in opera at the Sydney Conservatorium called Russell something-or-other.

Russell, unfortunately, was having marital problems and it soon became obvious he was in dire need of a holiday. So off he went, leaving a very young student, who was about to sit her final exams, to try and cope with my habits, bad or otherwise. She couldn’t have been more than 23 years old, friendly in an engaging manner, long dark haired and almost too keen to laugh at my jokes. I liked her instantly.

It soon became obvious that my young repetiteur was not quite flush with money so whenever the opportunity arose I’d slip her the odd complimentary operatic ticket and she and her equally young and financially-embarrassed French-teaching husband, Greg, would live it up, if only for one fleeting afternoon.

Most of our lessons would take place at the Conservatorium. When bureaucracy intervened and a practice room was unavailable, we’d retire to the couple’s Lavender Bay flat with its 2 centimetre view of the Harbour Bridge, where the prize possession was an upright piano which had seen better days. Eventually, they leased out the flat and we rehearsed in the house Riverview College had placed at Greg’s disposal.

I had found another vocal teacher by then. Gordon Willcock, who was singing Herod in the AO’s Salome, decided to take me on. It was quite convenient - he lived one block from my flat in Manly. My young lass stayed on as coach and, though I was spending more money than I’d ever hope to make as a singer, I was quite happy with the arrangement.

I even entered the Sydney Eisteddfod with my coach as accompanist. I couldn’t afford to pay her for the extra time, so we agreed to split the winnings. There was nothing to split!

When Gordon decided to form a new amateur musical company with the co-operation of his pupils, I was the first to volunteer. Gordon also coerced two of his colleagues from the AO to help out. Greg Yurisich, the principal baritone, became musical director and one of the resident producers, Stuart Maunder, agreed to direct.

The newly formed company became known as the Lane Cove Light Opera and its first and only production was the Gilbert and Sullivan double-bill of HMS Pinafore and Trial by Jury.

When the orchestral conductors were chosen, another final year student from the Conservatorium called Vince Callaguiri was selected for Trial and I suggested my coach for Pinafore.

And that is how on Wednesday April 20, 1983, Simone Young raised a musical baton for the first time.

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