After completing a voyage on the SS Australis in February 1976 (voyage 53 southbound) I became obsessed with the ship and began to explore her history and collect, what is arguably, one of the largest private collections of Chandris / Australis related memorabilia.
SSAUSTRALIS.COM began in August 1998 and followed the first web site created by web master Ken Ironside titled SS Australis Homepage . Originally called ss-australis.com my page was hacked and taken over by scammers who then deleted my page and advertised products. I had no way of getting it back so had to move to the new ssaustralis.com. Ken’s page was in search of ex crew that he worked with. My site was the first web site to be dedicated to the full history of the SS Australis and I wish to acknowledge my good friend in the UK, Ken, as his dedication in the early years in helping me set up my site to report the full history, teaching me HTML coding, meta tags etc cannot go unacknowledged and I wish to thank Ken very much for his help. Remembering that web page programming is not as easy as it is today, it was hard work.
Ken was also on my trip as the swimming pool and Gym attendant on C deck, I remember Ken when I used to go for swims in the indoor pool as we would chat with him whilst he filled the pool.
The website grew and grew, especially as updates of the wreck were emailed to me, we slowly, over several years watched our lady disappear into the sea. Since she disappeared the website became stagnant and old technology simply could not be viewed using ipads, phones and other devices, like the wreck my web site slowly crumbled.
The original web page was HUGE, as one of the first websites around I had many pictures and updates. As the web site fell into disrepair many links stopped working. My intention now is to rebuild and keep it relatively simple, these days many pictures can be gleaned from the web on the life of the ship where as back in 1998 it exciting to find and receive “exclusive photos” and build up an archive.
regards
Darren web master
email