Mastering the Port of Geelong

Andrew Mathieson
GEELONG’S harbour master wields so much power controlling sea traffic on Corio Bay’s 24 nautical miles of channels that it’s difficult to picture him in his younger years boarding India’s mysterious tramp boats.
The memory rekindles in him a famous tune he heard as the boats full of itinerant sailors used to pull into Bay of Bengal from some of the world’s busiest ports.
“Yes, I remember the ships coming in,” Dilip Abrahams says as he shapes up to sing, “just like that song Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.”
The Otis Reading ditty brings roars of laughter from the 59-year-old.
But the ships and the sea of his former home port were more than just a way of escaping the drudgery of Calcutta life.
Dilip remembers how standing on the port once stirred a childhood passion that turned into his life’s work.
He can still easily visualise the sights from one of his first sea trips, which took him out of the stifling humidity of India past glaciers and fjords outside Norway.
“It was a different world then,” Dilip recalls.
“The fact that these big ships used to sail the seas of the world and come from mysterious places, that always intrigued me.
“I always wanted to go on one of them and there was almost no port in the world I didn’t go to over the next 22 years.”
Back when Dilip first went to sea, tramp ships gave men an opportunity to simply jump on board, sail the seas for weeks and never know their next port of call until they unloaded the cargo.
Rising through the ranks to captain of a large ship, Dilip never forgot his harsh cadet roots from the first shipping company that came along.
“You would train for four years and get paid a pittance but you’d get fed and a bed and start learning and the best thing of all was travelling,” he says.
True to the stereotype of the salty sea dog, Dilip relates a saucy creed of the ocean.
“They say travel broadens the mind, so I guess if you’re a young sailor your mind is a lot about broads,” he chuckles, “so mine is very broad now.”
Australian ports were his favourite in the world as an Indian sailor but attempts in 1988 to achieve work on ships proved harder than docking a ship without a rope at a harbour without a mooring.
The industry was a closed shop in the day to sailors who weren’t union members and didn’t have a secure job on a cargo ship.
Instead, Dilip was forced to teach nautical subjects for six years to bring home a pay cheque and even then his job at Port of Melbourne was working ashore rather than on deck.
But, now a harbour master, the sea has never been too far away.
“If you notice the wall map,” he says, pointing to a wall covered with detailed paper, “I look at every single line on the map and it means something to me.”
Overlooking the bay from his Victorian Regional Channels office, Dilip likens the position to being at the top of a control tower at an airport.
He likes the job of maintaining the safety of large commercial vessels around smaller recreational craft to operating airport airspace.
“We don’t prevent people from being in the channel – we say ‘Try to avoid being there’,” Dilip explains.
“But it should be like visiting an airport – you don’t wander around the runway. You’ll be on there for a short time if a plane lands.”
Dilip lays down directions for about 500 visiting ships and the law for any other boats in their path.
With a sense of great humour, he describes the constant battle for space on the seas.
“We find these guys between the footy and cricket seasons when they have nothing to do,” he grumbles.
“They grab an old tinnie in the backyard, check it for holes, pick up a couple of mates, grab a slab of beer but don’t read any of the signs and they go and anchor in the middle of the channels.”