The volunteer hospital ship MV Pacific Link berthed ahead of the historic vessel Failie

After committing a petty crime, Ken Mulligan’s great-great grandfather was sent to Australia in November 1818 on the sailing ship Morley which took 121 days to get here.

In Port Adelaide we found a vessel of a different kind — MV Pacific Link, a volunteer hospital ship Ken is sending on a longer voyage to Papua New Guinea via 16 Australian ports.

Ken Mulligan, organiser of the voyage to Papua New Guinea

Ken is CEO of YWAM-Marine Reach Australia which operates MV Pacific Link, now on a mission to provide clinical services, primary health care and health education in PNG.

In August 2010 the ship will sail to Cairns and Thursday Island then on to Port Moresby in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea. The Australian leg of the voyage will promote PNG’s millennium development goals.

Young and old, skilled and unskilled, health professionals, marine specialists, crew, businesses, churches, service clubs and schools will be called on to collect spectacles and supplies for PNG, where more than half a million people have low vision that could be corrected with glasses.

Port volunteer Keith Ridgeway talks with one of the young YWAM volunteers

Sustainability on board

MV Pacific Link is operated on sound environmental and sustainable principles.

Biofuels are used wherever possible, but remote locations cannot always guarantee this.

Operations and maintenance crew are all trained in sustainable practices, as well as health, safety and fire standards.

Built in Japan in in 1979, Pacific Link is 37m long and has a 7.3m beam,  50 berths and an operating theatre; its home port is Tauranga, New Zealand.

Find out more at the YWAMShips website

Josey from the new café La Caz Creole has an approving smile for Graham's car.

Graham took me for spin along the Esplanade and I understood how good his 1978 Leyland Californian really is.

“It was lying in a mate’s barn for 15 years and it was rusted and needed a major makeover, so he gave it to me, Graham said.

“I’d always promised the wife I’d get her a convertible and that’s all I could afford.

“So I stripped it, every nut and bolt, down to nothing and rebuilt it.”

Graham, 62, had never worked on a car in his life, but he’s a former waterside worker who’s been in the building industry for many years, so he knows how to create things.

Like many, he’s a dedicated local and remembers earlier days when Port Adelaide was a bustling port and he was a wharfie waiting outside the First Commercial Hotel each morning for the tray truck to arrive to take workers to the docks.

“Some days we’d be loading fruit and if we couldn’t get that work we’d be carrying heavy sacks of flour from the mills.

“In Semaphore, Largs and the Port everyone’s so friendly has so many great characters here, and once you get over that bridge you think your home now.

“I’ve always lived here and why wouldn’t you?

“Wherever I’ve travelled around Australia I’m always meeting people from here.

After working on the wharves in the Port, Graham became a building site manager and worked on many big projects in  Adelaide.

He’s just finished work on the Adelaide Zoo enclosure for the pandas Wang and Funi, now Adelaide’s biggest tourist attraction.

He was also site manager for the rebuilding of the Wine Underground in the city after it was destroyed in a building fire, and the Elizabeth Aquadome, designed for fun and relaxation. 

And that’s what Graham’s glistening black and chrome car is all about.

For car enthusiasts we can tell you that Graham, with some help from his mates, grit blasted the Californian, undercoated it with two-pack epoxy, then traded some building work with a painter for the final shiny coat of black.

“We all worked on each others’ cars and they helped me in fitting twin SU carbs and extractors, bored out from 1000 to 1100, and fitted new brake linings and lines, sourcing most parts from Mini Sports in Queensland.

“The seats were done by two local women motor trimmers and we fitted marine grade carpet.”

The wheels came from Wheel Works in Hindmarsh and the tyres from America and as Graham says, and I can confirm, “it’s running like a dream now.”

While I was talking with Graham along came one of his mates Peter Walsh and he joined us for coffee.

“I’ve found another one in a shed,” said Peter, “and I might do that one up too.

“I call them café cruisers and there’s heaps of them running round Sydney; I saw one on the internet selling for $52,000.”

With forum chair Cath Duncan and Centre volunteer and forum organiser Stuart Gifford, candidates face the electors

Audience appreciation is demonstrated in this letter to the Port Messenger newspaper.

The forum, organised by the new Semaphore Information Centre and Adelaide Eco Info Exchange, is just the first of many events in the Centre’s community-building programme and there was some very lively debate.