Skip to main content

(My) Photo of the day, Or Bak skyene er himmelen alltid blå


Yes, it is another ship! Drawn to the water yet again, I got a new one for my collection.

This one is the MV Oceanic Viking, an armed patrol vessel of the Australian Customs Service. However, it is owned by a Norwegian shipping company and contracted to the Australian Customs Service through P & O Marine Services. A convoluted arrangement, to be sure.

It was originally built as an offshore supply vessel, then converted into a vessel used for laying optic fiber cables between Europe and North America, then in 2004 it was converted to an armed patrol vessel and chartered to the Australian Customs Service. With two deck-mounted machine guns, it became the first civilian ship in Australia to carry mounted weapons in peacetime. It is Australian flagged and operated by a civilian crew, carrying armed Customs officers.

It seems to get about, chasing illegal Indonesian fishing vessels off the Northern Territory and responding to distress signals as far away as the Kerguelen Islands (as close to the middle of nowhere as you might find). Most recently, it has been shadowing Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean. You might have seen it in the news.

Comments

Dina said…
Wow, that's one formidable ship!
Great that she was sitting there waiting for your "capture."
OK, what does the post title mean?

Hey Kris, I answered your query about Jerusalem stone. You'd better read it because no one else will have the patience to read that long an answer.
The trouble with your inquiring mind is that you look for logic and rational answers, something foreign to the Middle East and the Holy Land. LOL
I had fun researching the post, though. Thanks for the homework.
Kris McCracken said…
The title is a nifty little Norwegian proverb that goes something like: "Behind the clouds the sky is always blue". A nice and positive one, I feel/

Thanks for doing the research, I figured that it must be something like that. Unfortunately, it isn't just the Middle East that sometimes lacks in logic and rationality!
freefalling said…
Does seeing this on Cocky (Ch7 Sunrise)this morning, count as seeing it one the news?
Kris McCracken said…
In our house we don't call him 'cocky', we call him 'Cockhead'.

In fact, we call it the 'Cockhead and Bird-brain show'.

We are not fans.

Popular posts from this blog

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...