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'Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push'.

Shirongo Matsuri, Shirahige Shrine, Sugashima, Mie Prefecture, Japan

On July 11, white-costumed ama women divers of the district dive for abalone. When a note is sounded from a triton horn, the women dive into the water, competing to be the first to catch an abalone. The women who catch the first male and female abalone offer them at the shrine in order to ensure safe sea journeys and an abundant harvest, and become the following year's head divers. The numbers of abalone have decreased over the years as the environment has been degraded, and since the time that divers started wearing wetsuits and were able to dive longer in the cold sea. Diving is controlled by the government, and divers may work only 25 days of the year.

The word ama literally means 'sea person' ...

British royal sees Flying Dutchman ghost ship

1881 On this day, 16-year-old Prince George (1865 - 1936), the future King George V of the United Kingdom, as a young midshipman on HMS Bacchante, wrote in his journal that he had seen that day (4:00 am) the phantom ship, the Flying Dutchman, off the port bow.

Sailing with George was the heir to the throne, his elder brother, the mentally deficient Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward (Eddie) who later mysteriously died before becoming king, much to the relief of the British Royal Family.

Eddie, who was later a modern and unlikely suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, also recorded in his journal the sighting of the Dutchman which was seen by thirteen witnesses including the lookout on the Bacchante's forecastle (who fell and died within seven hours – 10:45 am), and the officer of the watch ...

George wrote in his journal: "At 4am the 'Flying Dutchman' crossed our bows. A strange red light as a of a phantom ship aglow ... Thirteen persons altogether saw her, but whether it was Van Deimen [sic] of the 'Flying Dutchman' or what else must remain unknown. The Tourmaline and Cleopatra ... flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light."

Categories: nautical, mystery, paranormal, monarchy, uk

1992 The Kiama Blowhole Tragedy

The north coast of the state of New South Wales, Australia, where your almanac is produced, is very beautiful, but for picture postcard scenery, take a drive south from Sydney along the Prince’s Highway. After a few hours of picturesque countryside and coastline and you will arrive at the small town of Kiama, famous for a spectacular natural phenomenon.

The Kiama Blowhole is a natural cavern or chasm at Blowhole Point, on a seaside cliff near town. When the seas run from the south-east, a spectacular plume of water erupts as high as 60 metres (about 65 yards). Something like 600,000 people a year come to the Blowhole to marvel at the sight.

The British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia, George Bass, was the first European to see this sight, when he anchored his whale boat in the sheltered bay, now known as Kiama Harbour, in December, 1797.
Bass wrote: “The earth for a considerable distance round in the form approaching a circle seemed to have given way; it was now a green slope … Towards the centre was a deep ragged hole of about 25 to 30 feet in diameter and on one side of it the sea washed in through a subterraneous passage...with a most tremendous noise ...”

The Blowhole and the adjacent lighthouse have long been a popular tourist attraction. In January, 1889 a tightrope walker named Charles Jackson attracted large crowds to see his daring crossings of the mouth of the chasm.

Tragedy strikes Kiama
Kiama had been the site of a tragedy on February 22, 1949 when a ship called the Bombo, a steel vessel of 640 tons built in Leith, Scotland in 1930 especially for carrying blue metal from Kiama to Sydney, sank in a gale with the loss of all but two of her crew. The Blowhole itself has also been the location of a number of suicides. In 1992, tragedy struck the town again, this time at the Blowhole. And it was not to be the last occasion.

On Saturday, July 11, 1992, 26-year-old Afghan refugee Fared Cina, his wife Angella, 28 and their four-year-old daughter Baran, were standing by the blowhole as so many have before and since. Enjoying the “whoosh!” of the famous blowhole with the the Cina family were Mrs Cina’s nephew Arash, aged 7.

Nasarin Zobair, 37, her daughter Kahlida, 21 and eleven-year-old son Mustafa were also watching Nature’s show with their friends, when the water rose up with tremendous force, knocking all seven of them into the chasm and rushing them out to sea, with three relatives left standing hopelessly nearby. Mr Cina’s body was never recovered.

At the time I had very close associations with Australia’s relatively small community of Afghan people, most of them refugees who suffered unspeakable abuses under the Communists and Taliban, and I remember well the pall of grief that fell over this already benighted community.

Tragedy strikes again
Tragically, on April 10, 1997, the bodies of Sydney cousins Masuda Khushbakht, 16, and Khatera Nawabi, 20, both relatives of four of the people who died in the blowhole in 1992, were found floating in the ocean off Kiama ...

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