Bissy Girl

My father, George Buxton Wastell, was one of four friends who owned the Bissy Girl and sailed her in the Sydney to Hobart race in 1954. The Sydney Morning Herald (1/12/1954) also recounts that the ketch was owned by Tom (Tommy) Dawson who, along with my father and the other members of the Girl's crew and owners, worked in the Dept of Transport. They made several trips, travelling up the east coast to Brisbane and then onto the Whitsunday Islands, working when they needed money. They also attempted a journey to New Zealand but had to turn back to severe illness, their entry back into Sydney Harbour, having run before a gale and with a jerry-rigged rudder due to storm damage, also made the papers. My father had been sent out to Australia at the start of the war under the CORB programme, unable to return to England, he enlisted the Australian Army (after failing to get his foster parents' permission to join the Navy at sixteen), and served in Bougainville among other places. He and his brothers and sisters decided to stay in Australia after the war and my grandparents soon joined them after a separation of nearly six years. I have always felt that my father and his friends where able to make up for lost youthful adventures due to the war and that the Bissy Girl was one of his happiest times - especially as it led to him meeting my mother.