Dear Ma 9th May, 1962



I am getting near
Australia every day
it is only eight days
before I get off.

The weather is getting cooler
and everyone on the boat
is feeling a bit better
after the heat.

Some people lay
out in the sun
so long
and they got sunstroke

We got off at Colombo,
it is a lovely place
but it would cost a mint of money
if you were there very long.

Everyone is getting a bit broke
and if you left anything
it would not sit very long.
I lost nothing yet, good job.

I got a shirt for Johnny
in Colombo
and a pair of light trousers
for myself.

I will write to Johnny today
and tell him when I am arriving.
I don’t know if he ever answered
the letter you sent him.

Ah well,
if I don’t see him,
I will live
out of a cave or something.

Last night
I met that man and his wife from Comber,
they were not much to talk to,
one of them ones that knows it all.

I talked to him for half an hour
and I never even got to ask their names.
He seemed to know Sam’s wife
and her brother the policeman

but I could not make out
who he was, he asked plenty
but told nothing
so I never stayed very long.

There is not very much
to do on the boat.
I think everybody will be glad
when we reach Sydney.

I will be glad we left
because it gets very tiresome
To lay about every day doing nothing,
you would be safer working your way over.

If Florence does not get a letter
the same time as you
you can tell her that if she still comes up
that it will be a week or so before she gets one.

All the post offices are closed at Fremantle
and I got her a wee thing in Aden
and I have it all closed up
and a letter inside and I cannot open it again

for I left it in the ship’s post office
and if the post offices are open in Fremantle
it will go and if they are closed
it will not go

until about a week later
when we get to Melbourne
hope you can understand
all that bit of writing.

I have sent two or three postcards
to some of the people
It is very dear to send them old things
a postcard is near a bob

and it will cost another one
and six or so to put stamps on
just as I have not sent everyone
a postcard that ask me or I would be broke.

Tell Thomas
that I fell in
with that brother of the girl
he went with in Belfast.

He is in the very best
of a fellow
better than I thought he was.
I think that is all there is to write about.

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