The Arrow: September 9, 1932
The Advocate: February 17, 1930
The Mercury: March 13, 1930
The Sydney Morning Herald: December 12, 1930
— Tim
Archive for the ‘New Guinea’ Category
The Sirocco Calls In
05
Dec
Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Qld. June 18, 1930
OFF TO NEW GUINEA.
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FOUR ADVENTURERS.
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The Sirocco Calls In.
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ONE TIME CRACK YACHT.
Long, narrow-waisted, black-hulled,with towering stick scowing above the wharf decking, but bearing little signs of the buffeting she has received on her voyage, the Sirocco, late of Royal Sydney Yacht Club, now bound for New Guinea and the beche de mer and trochus shell, nine days up from Sydney, lies at the old town wharf.
Fifty years old, but as staunch as the day she slipped into the water for the first time at the Circular Quay slips, the Sirocco will know a different atmosphere now from the one she has been accustomed to so long. Her youthful crew know where they are going. First there is Captain Errol Flynn, late Cambridge undergrad, now planter on a lonely island 40 miles from mysterious Madang, the island of the “White Kanakas,” where he dispenses high and low justice to his 40 odd natives and bears his share of the white man’s burden.
“This is our navigator,” said Captain Errol Flynn, from under his blankets when a “Bulletin” man stepped aboard. “You’ll have to excuse me. Just a touch of malaria. But meet the crew.” Mr. T. Adams, another young Englishman, is the navigator. Close clipped moustache, accent, and physique brand him unmistakably the product of University. Mr. C. Burt, another member of the crew, is also an Englishman, and Australia is represented by Mr. Rex Long-Innes, son of Judge Long-Innes, who is going forth with the others to seek his fortune in the South Seas.
When they talked it was mostly about their argosy.
‘”She’s old, but she’s good,” says the skipper, with pride in his voice, and he told the “Bulletin” man how she logged 14 for three hours in a howling south-easter that piled them up in Coff’s Harbour with a foot of water in the cabin.
“Forty-four feet over all, with a Swedish oil engine, we’re not worrying about the weather,” they add. Already they have had their share of adventure on the trip. They made their names and took their baptismswhen they crossed the bars in northern New South Wales in howling gales. They went ashore in Great Sandy Straits, and had more than their share of rough weather but builders builded well 50 years ago, and lean-waisted as she is the Sirocco has ten tons of lead under her keel.
In the cabin, where the captain lies with malaria, where the “crew” sit round in shorts, and where two business-like rifles are fast in clips above the bunks, one might have thought yesterday that the Sirocco had reached to sea to seek their fortunes.
— Tim
IN WITH FLYNN – THE FLYNN CROWD
15
Sep
ERROL HAD AN ASTRONOMICALLY LARGE, VARIED AND WIDESPREAD NUMBER OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, ASSOCIATES & AFFILIATIONS.
THIS POST IS TO HELP CREATE A COMPREHENSIVE RECORD OF PEOPLE AND GROUPS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD A ROLE IN ERROL’S EXTRAORDINARY LIFE – FROM A to Z – In Repeated Cycles – from Aadland to Zimbalist and Beyond!
I’ll start posting alphabetically, with hope and encouragement that all of you will join in by posting other names & photos of The Flynn Crowd!
— Tim
Errol Strikes Gold in New Guinea – By the Light of His Hurricane Lamps
29
Apr
When Errol moved to Salamaua, Papua New Guinea, he “plunged” himself into reading great works of literature – through “Russian novelists, Greek philosophers, French writers” he nightly “skipped, waded, muddled” and “sometimes swam well”, by the light of his hurricane lamps, fondling these books as if [he] were running his hands through a lovely woman’s hair”. “An inner need for learning sprang up in [him]” “to connect with the ideas of the world” – a need that proved pivotal in his life. This was where and how Errol found gold in New Guinea, as he put it.
Here’s Errol’s own description of that transformative time & experience:
And here’s pre-WWII Salamaua, where Errol lived:
Errol’s Jungle Reading List included:
Aristotle
Honore de Balzac
George Baudelaire (Correction: that should obviously be Charles Baudelaire!)
Victor Hugo
Guy de Maupassant
Plato
Edmond Rostand – Errol particularly liked the “beauty of style” of Rostand, who he read with the help of a French dictionary, and said had the “greatest influence upon [him]”. He specifically cited L’Aiglon, the story of Napoleon II. I imagine he also read Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Here’s some images of the books as Errol may have seen them:
Robert Louis Stevenson
H. G. Wells
Here are some 1930 images of The Outline of History, as Errol may have seen it:
— Tim
