Mr. A. PRESCOTT

The Orient line's RMS Otranto, twenty thousand tons, one hundred and ninety-eight metres long and twenty-five metres wide, nudged the breast wharf at Port Adelaide's Outer Harbour at eight a.m. on Saturday, April 7th, and lifted the first row of piles about one and a half metres to the accompaniment of creaks and groans from the wharf timbers. The crowd watching her arrival moved back hurriedly. I had arrived in my new homeland with a bump. Since leaving Tilbury on January 8th we had steamed thirty-three thousand kilometres. As usual I had risen early, had breakfast, attended to all my baggage and other duties and was free to find a good vantage point to watch all the fuss and bustle of our berthing. Berthed astern of Otranto was the P&O Line's Mooltan, which had been labelled the plague ship in the UK because on three consecutive arrivals she had been kept out at the quarantine buoy.