Peter Christopher (author)

Last updated

Peter Christopher

OAM
Born1948 (age 7576)
Cyprus
LanguageEnglish, Greek
NationalityAustralian
South Australian and Sunderland delegates on board the City of Adelaide during the conference convened by The Duke of Edinburgh (Peter Christopher is standing on the right hand side) City of Adelaide 2001 Prince Philip Conference.jpg
South Australian and Sunderland delegates on board the City of Adelaide during the conference convened by The Duke of Edinburgh (Peter Christopher is standing on the right hand side)

Peter Christopher, OAM, (born 1948, Cyprus) is an Australian author and photographer who writes about shipwrecks and riverboats. He is also a Director of the not for profit organisation, Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd (CSCOAL), set up to save the 1864 clipper ship, City of Adelaide . [1] [2]

Contents

Career

Christopher is the author of seven books, co-author of another and co-editor of another. Australia's large collection of original operating paddle steamers has been the subject of three decades of research by him, and hence the subject of two of his seven books. [3] [4]

Since 1967, Christopher has been an active scuba diver and volunteer maritime archaeologist who has visited and documented wrecks in South Australia (SA) in particular, but also around Australia. Christopher's contribution to maritime archaeology was recognised by an Award presented to him by the Australian Government in 1982 and by the award of a life membership by the Society for Underwater Historical Research in 2000. [5] [6]

In 1973, Christopher was a member of the South Australian Government's inquiry into scuba diving deaths in fresh water sink-holes and underwater caves in the south east of SA. The Report of the Committee "appointed to investigate safety precautions for Scuba Divers in Fresh Water Sink Holes and Underwater Caves" which was presented to the Government in January 1974 essentially recommended non-legislative response to the problem. The subsequent voluntary program of regulation via diver training and certification has been carried out by the Cave Divers Association of Australia. The success of the program is evident with nearly four decades of low fatality cave diving following the implementation of the Report's recommendations. [7]

Christopher is a Justice of the Peace for South Australia.

He is not a full-time author; he worked as a senior Trade Union official, with his role until mid June 2015 being the Chief Industrial Officer of the Public Service Association of South Australia. He retired to focus on a volunteer role developing a seaport village for the historic 1864 clipper ship "City of Adelaide' in Port Adelaide's inner harbour. [8] [9] [10]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<i>The Advertiser</i> (Adelaide) Australian newspaper

The Advertiser is a daily tabloid format newspaper based in the city of Adelaide, South Australia. First published as a broadsheet named The South Australian Advertiser on 12 July 1858, it is currently a tabloid printed from Monday to Saturday. The Advertiser came under the ownership of Keith Murdoch in the 1950s, and the full ownership of Rupert Murdoch in 1987. It is a publication of Advertiser Newspapers Pty Ltd (ADV), a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of News Corp. Through much of the 20th century, The Advertiser was Adelaide's morning broadsheet, The News the afternoon tabloid, with The Sunday Mail covering weekend sport, and Messenger Newspapers community news. The head office was relocated from a former premises in King William Street, to a new News Corp office complex, known as Keith Murdoch House at 31 Waymouth Street.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neptune Islands</span> Two groups of islands in South Australia

The Neptune Islands consist of two groups of islands located close to the entrance to Spencer Gulf in South Australia. They are well known as a venue for great white shark tourism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Port Adelaide</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the city of Adelaide. Port Adelaide played an important role in the formative decades of Adelaide and South Australia, with the port being early Adelaide's main supply and information link to the rest of the world. Its Kaurna name, although not officially adopted as a dual name, is Yartapuulti.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Messenger Newspapers</span> Newspaper publisher

Messenger Newspapers is the publisher of 9 free suburban weekly newspapers together covering the Adelaide metropolitan area. Established by Roger Baynes in Port Adelaide in 1951, Messenger has since acquired other independent suburban titles to become Adelaide's only suburban newspaper group. The paper is a subsidiary of News Limited and is affiliated with The Adelaide Advertiser. The Messenger is delivered weekly to 9 different suburban areas, each paper targeting content to its distribution area with some shared content.

<i>City of Adelaide</i> (1864) Worlds oldest surviving clipper ship, completed in 1884

City of Adelaide is a clipper ship, built in Sunderland, England, and launched on 7 May 1864. It was built by Pile, Hay and Co. to transport passengers and goods between Britain and Australia. Between 1864 and 1887 she made 23 annual return voyages from London and Plymouth to Adelaide, South Australia and played an important part in the immigration of Australia. On the return voyages she carried passengers, wool, and copper from Adelaide and Port Augusta to London. From 1869 to 1885 she was part of Harrold Brothers' "Adelaide Line" of clippers.

<i>Postboy</i> (ship)

The 63 ton schooner Postboy was built at Port Adelaide in 1874. The schooner was owned by Messrs. Weman and Morgan and registered at Port Adelaide. She was a regular trading vessel between Port Adelaide and the gulf ports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holdfast Bay</span> Bay in Gulf St Vincent, South Australia

The Holdfast Bay is a small bay in Gulf St Vincent, next to Adelaide, South Australia. Along its shores lie the local government area of the City of Holdfast Bay and the suburbs of Glenelg and Glenelg North

HMS <i>Buffalo</i> (1813)

HMS Buffalo was a storeship of the Royal Navy, originally built and launched at Sulkea, opposite Calcutta, in 1813 as the merchant vessel Hindostan. The Admiralty purchased her that year after she arrived in Britain. She later transported convicts and immigrants to Australia, before being wrecked in 1840.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Rule</span> British archaeologist who led the Mary Rose project

Dr Margaret Helen Rule, was a British archaeologist. She is most notable for her involvement with the project that excavated and raised the Tudor warship Mary Rose in 1982.

<i>Loch Vennachar</i> Scottish sailing ship that was wrecked off South Australia in 1905

Loch Vennachar was an iron-hulled, three-masted clipper ship that was built in Scotland in 1875 and lost with all hands off the coast of South Australia in 1905. She spent her entire career with the Glasgow Shipping Company, trading between Britain and Australia. The company was familiarly called the "Loch Line", as all of its ships were named after Scottish lochs. The ship was named after Loch Venachar, in what was then Perthshire.

<i>Santiago</i> (1856 ship)

The Santiago was a 455-ton barque launched in 1856. It was built by Henry Balfour of Methil, Fife for the Liverpool shipping company Balfour Williamson. It sailed mainly between Liverpool and Chile, but also to Australia. Its remnant hull, which lies in a ships' graveyard in South Australia, was considered 'the oldest intact iron hull sailing vessel in the world', until part of the central section collapsed in January 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Jackson (diver)</span> Australian technical diver and author

Captain Trevor Jackson is an Australian technical diver, shipwreck researcher, author and inventor. In 2002 he staged what became known as the "Centaur Dive", which subsequently led to the gazetted position of the sunken Hospital Ship AHS Centaur being questioned. Jackson is the inventor of the 'Sea Tiger' lost diver location system, and an author on the subject of wreck diving.

<i>Yandra</i>

Yandra was a 990-ton coastal steamer built by Burmeister & Wain, Copenhagen in 1928 for Coast Steamships for service in the Australian state of South Australia. She was requisitioned by the Royal Australian Navy in June 1940 during World War II for conversion to a minesweeper and anti-submarine vessel and was commissioned on 22 September 1940 as HMAS Yandra. She returned to civilian service in 1946. She ran aground during dense fog onto South Neptune Island on 25 January 1959 and was subsequently written off.

David Godwin Burchell BEM was a South Australian business man, a recreational scuba diver and a football administrator.

The Society for Underwater Historical Research (SUHR) was an amateur maritime archaeology organisation operating in South Australia (SA). It was formed in 1974 by recreational scuba divers and other persons to pursue an interest in maritime archaeology and maritime history. The SUHR was renamed as the South Australian Archaeology Society in March 2012 as part of a plan to expand its activities beyond maritime archaeology to include other archaeological disciplines.

<i>Ellen</i> (1883)

Ellen was a steamship that was launched in 1883 and whose career involved coastal shipping firstly in the Colony of Queensland and then in the Australian state of South Australia. It was wrecked in Gulf St Vincent in South Australia at Morgan's Beach near the town of Cape Jervis on Saturday, 12 December 1908 during its return from fishing in waters around Kangaroo Island to a destination on the mainland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HMS Investigator Anchors</span>

The HMS Investigator Anchors are the two anchors that jettisoned from HMS Investigator on the morning of Saturday, 21 May 1803, by her commander, Matthew Flinders, in order to avoid running aground on Middle Island in the Archipelago of the Recherche on the south coast of New Holland. In 1973, the anchors were located and recovered by members of the Underwater Explorers Club of South Australia (UEC). The recovered anchors became the subject of an ownership dispute between various governments, particularly those of South Australia and Western Australia due to their historic significance as artefacts of a major voyage of European exploration. The dispute was resolved with the ownership of the anchors going to the Australian Government who subsequently gifted one of the anchors to the South Australian Government. The pair of artefacts is also known as Flinders' Anchors.

Save Ontario Shipwrecks (SOS) is a Provincial Heritage Organization in Ontario, Canada. SOS is a public charitable organization which operates through Local Chapter Committees supported by a Provincial Board of Directors and Provincial Executive.

References

  1. 'Who are we' at http://cityofadelaide.org.au/who-we-are.html, retrieved 20 May 2012
  2. "Australia Day 2024 Honours List" (PDF). The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
  3. Brice, Rebecca (14 April 2008). "Dry Murray reveals past secrets". Australian Broadcasting Corporation - ABC News. Retrieved 18 November 2009.
  4. Kemp, Miles (26 September 2009). "Crusade to solve maritime mystery". The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia). Retrieved 18 November 2009.
  5. 'Editorial', Soundings, October 2000, pp.2 , in Cowan, David (editor), (2007), The Society for Underwater Historical Research – Publications 1974-2004, Port Adelaide, SA, Society for Underwater Historical Research, ( ISBN   978 0 9588006 6 2)
  6. Annual report. Parliamentary paper / The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Australian Government Publishing Service. 1981.
  7. South Australia. Committee Appointed to Investigate Safety Precautions for Scuba Divers in Fresh Water Sink-Holes and Underwater Caves; Draper, Laurence D. (Laurence Desmond), 1923- (1973), Report, [The Committee]{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. Novak, Lauren (20 June 2015). "Lunch with ... Peter Christopher; Union man's sea-change". The Advertiser. p. 72. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  9. 'New book by passionate PSA veteran', Public Sector Review February/7 March, pp.6 at http://cpsu.asn.au/review/Public_Serv_A__s_Review_2699.pdf Archived 18 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved 24 May 2012.
  10. 'Overcrowding crisis forces prisoners to be held in court cells' at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/full-house-sign-at-jails/story-e6freol3-1111117749440, retrieved 24 May 2012.

Further reading