Port Profile: seafarer Keith Ridgeway

In the first of our series on characters of The Port, Semaphore and Largs Bay, we honour the remarkable Keith Ridgeway, who was born in another port, Fremantle, and came to Port Adelaide as a 16-year-old merchant seaman.

He first went to sea at 14 as a deck boy and spent 52 years sailing round the world; today, as skipper of the Archie Badenoch, he’s still on the water regularly, taking groups of school students out on the Port River for the Maritime Museum.

His first job in Port Adelaide was on the passenger ship MV Minnipa which plied between Port Adelaide and Port Lincoln.

He remembers that whenever the Port Magpies had a big game on, a huge band of young Port Lincoln fans would sleep on deck both ways just to get to the game.

Keith also recalls the railway station at the St Vincent Street end of Lipson Street where Minnipa passengers would alight and then walk down Lipson or Timpson Streets to board the vessel.

“Hail, rain or shine, they would have to walk down to Number 3 wharf and then dodge horses and carts and wharfies loading cargo, he said.

“The Minnipa always berthed right here, just where we’re having coffee at Pancakes in the Port.”

“At 19, I met my wife Valerie, a Port girl; we’ve been married for 51 years and weve lived here ever since”

Following his many years at sea, Keith was state branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia for four years and then became an active volunteer with the Maritime Museum and other worthwhile causes and events.

They include Anzac Light on the Water, Merchant Navy Day, the Navigator Memorial project in Timpson Street, Flotilla for Kids, the Port Festival and he now leads a volunteer team working on the restoration of the historic ketch Failie at Port Adelaides McLaren Wharf.

Keith is the spokesman for the volunteer organisation Port Adelaide Maritime Heritage and wants to see a maritime heritage village at Cruickshank’s Corner.

Other Port Adelaide Maritime Heritage volunteers include engineer Colin Emmett and deck crew Barry Poland, Tony Crosse, Steve Foster, Terry Foster, Tony Everett and Errol Ford.

More about Minnipa here.