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Good deeds aplenty at Stella Maris

People

As Catholics around the country show their support for seafarers on Sea Sunday this month, JENNY BRINKWORTH spent an afternoon with the Stella Maris Seafarers Centre at Taperoo.

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It’s often the little things in life that bring happiness and joy, but when you’re a seafarer who has been out at sea for 45 days and haven’t seen your family for up to eight months, those little things can be few and far between.

That’s where volunteers like Kate Driscoll and Lourdes Letherby come into the picture. As members of the Stella Maris Seafarers Centre at Taperoo, they pick up seafarers in a 12-seater bus and for the next few hours are at their beck and call. All with a smile and a laugh of course.

The day I joined them on the free service provided every weekday from 1-5pm, there were two seafarers from a Hong Kong bulk carrier who had contacted the Centre for assistance.

As Kate carefully dodged cranes and maneuvered the bus out of the wharf, Lourdes used her mathematical skills to change the men’s US dollars into Australian dollars. With the nearest foreign exchange facility at West Lakes, the Seafarers Centre holds a small amount of cash for this purpose.

Avijit and Shajahan in the shopping for fishing tackle.

Indian seafarers Avijit and Shajahan asked if their first stop could be a fishing tackle shop and showed us photos of an impressive catch of king fish (mackerel) in Gibraltar. Lourdes shared fishing stories with the men as we made our way to Port Adelaide.

Avijit has a wife and one-year-old daughter whom he hasn’t seen for eight months and Shajahan has a wife and two children at home.

Both have been working on the Sungkiang which left Adelaide for Papua New Guinea and Fiji where Shajahan hopes to get some fishing in.

After a visit to the tackle shop in Port Adelaide, the men asked if they could go to a supermarket to stock up on some personal items such as hair cream and clippers. Next stop was a fast food outlet where they bought hamburgers for themselves and other crew members. Lastly, they picked up some KFC to take back to the ship.

When asked about their shopping expedition, the men replied “very good, very good” and quickly added that the highlight was “the three charming ladies”.

For Kate, helping seafarers like Avijit and Shajahan is integral to her Catholic faith.

“We are modelling what Jesus wants – kindness, empathy, care, respect for others, regardless of creed,” she said.

“As the baptised we’re all disciples…It’s about attraction rather than promotion, we attract others to our way of life by how we treat people.”

Kate also believes that we have a duty to look after the cargo ship crews, with 99 per cent of Australia’s trade moved by sea.

“We are an island continent so we should be very grateful to these men,” she said.

“They work tirelessly to bring into our ports products that sustain us and our economy.”

Kate began volunteering at the Centre after she and her husband Tom came to Adelaide from Horsham 13 years ago. Having backpacked through many parts of the world, she liked the idea of meeting people from other countries.

But her motivation became even stronger after meeting a Malaysian captain and taking him shopping whenever he was in port. He always asked to go to a fish and chips shop and on Christmas Eve he took his meal to the beach at Semaphore where there were lots of families having picnics.

“He started to walk down to the beach past all the families on the grass, and he just stopped dead,” she said.

“I could tell he was really enjoying it, but he looked a bit sad too and he told me he was missing his family.

“He was a big man, and I said come here, give me a hug. When he stepped back he had tears in his eyes and I thought ‘that’s why I’m doing this’.”

Other assistance provided by the Centre includes SIM cards for mobile phones and computers, use of a TV, computers and fast wireless internet, free books to take back to the ship and a limited range of souvenirs to purchase. The seafarers are given access to the adjacent Our Lady of the Visitation Church for prayers if requested, and occasionally they might attend Mass.

The Centre has produced a brochure with contact details that it distributes through ships’ captains and port authorities.

At one of Kate’s recent port visits there were 21 seafarers waiting for the bus. They were split into three groups as they were ferried to various places.

John Hall, Lourdes Letherby, Kevin Davies and Kate Driscoll.

“It was organised chaos,” she said with a chuckle, adding it was frustrating that Port Adelaide did not have a foreign exchange facility.

“It means the local businesses miss out because they do their shopping at West Lakes.”

The Centre’s treasurer, Kevin Davies, began volunteering at Stella Maris in 2008 after he heard someone speak about the service at Mass.

“I worked for 20 years for the Customs Department and liked being around shipping, so I thought I’d give it a go,” he said.

The seafarers come from all over the world; a glimpse of the sign-in book at the Centre shows recent visitors from the Philippines, Myanmar, Turkey, Russia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Serbia, India, Romania, Poland and China.

Kevin said the Centre once had evening shifts because that was when a lot of crew members were off duty and at a loose end but the downside was that the shops weren’t open.

While there are seafarer centres in most major ports in Australia, they all have different facilities and Adelaide is the only one to be run solely by volunteers.

At Christmas the Taperoo volunteers make up packs of treats for the ships in dock and they also put together six large packs Sea Sunday which the Lefevre parish celebrated on July 22.

Kate said the school children from Our Lady of the Visitation School make bookmarks with drawings and messages of kindness which the men really appreciated.

Stella Maris is the official maritime welfare agency of the Catholic Church. In 1922, Pope Pius XI approved the first constitution of the movement, known as Apostleship of the Sea. Stella Maris now operates in over 300 ports across the world. Donations to Stella Maris over $2 are tax deductible and can be made online here.

 

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