Japanese subs, love letters and bohemian sailors: The incredible history of the Kathleen Gillett

6 hours ago 1

On a hot morning in the week before Christmas, Matt Tomaszewski paid a visit to his mother’s childhood home.

He did not have to travel to some sleepy suburban street to find it. Instead, the 54-year-old marine scientist and filmmaker climbed from a gangway on to the deck of the Kathleen Gillett – a survivor of the first Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race 80 years ago.

Matt Tomaszewski on the Kathleen Gillett, one of the inaugural Sydney to Hobart yachts in 1945.

Tomaszewski’s mother spent the first 11 years of her life on the Kathleen, when the city’s foreshore suburbs were still inhabited by artists and workers on the fringes of society. Her father, a painter and sailor named Jack Earl, had left home at 16 to live on a boat in Manly, from where he swam to the shore every morning to go to work as an apprentice artist at a newspaper.

He had the Kathleen Gillett made and named after his wife in 1939. It became the family home – even during World War II, when Sydney Harbour was breached by Japanese submarines, and Earl plotted to sneak up on one of the invading vessels and put a sock over its periscope.

“They had an amazing childhood,” Tomaszewski said of his mum, Maris. “The torpedo that struck the warship [HMAS Kuttabul] here from the Japanese mini sub went underneath the Kathleen, and they felt the boat lift out of the water. When the American warships were out, she and her brother would row over and they’d catch fish and swap [them] for packets of chewing gum.”

After the war ended, Earl gathered a merry band of sailors and departed on a leisurely cruise to Tasmania. The cruise turned into a race, and the Sydney to Hobart was born.

The Kathleen crosses the finish line in Hobart on 1 January 1946, at the completion of the first ever Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.

Earl then took the Kathleen around the world, becoming just the second Australian boat to circumnavigate the globe. He was waved off by a crowd after kissing his wife goodbye aboard the yacht named after her. At sea, he wrote love letters to Kathleen, and drew her with red stars nestled in her dark brown curls.

When he returned from the 18-month voyage, Earl sold the Kathleen to buy a house on dry land.

“They’re unpacking the boat, his crewmates have gone, and he was sitting down talking to his wife. The kids were making the bunks up in the front of the boat, and he said it was almost like being at the side of a dying friend,” Tomaszewski said.

Tomaszewski was told the stories of his mother’s childhood and his grandfather’s adventures at his own family home, which became a hub for bohemian sailors. Visitors would moor their boats in the bay below, walk up the hill and introduce themselves to Earl, who lived upstairs.

Jack Earl and his wife Kathleen embrace before his departure on the 18-month circumnavigation aboard the boat he named after her.

“I was the youngest of the kids and would just sort of sit in the corner and watch it all come by,” Tomaszewski said. “The characters would come and go, and it was this really rich, vibrant waterfront community.”

Tomaszewski was 16 when the Kathleen was discovered in Guam in the 1980s. It was purchased by the Norwegian government and gifted back to Australia for the bicentenary in 1988, and has been kept in the Maritime Museum in Sydney since.

This year, for the 80th edition of the Sydney to Hobart, the Kathleen was sailed across the harbour to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in Rushcutters Bay. When Tomaszewski visits it on this hot morning before Christmas, he is instantly consumed by thoughts of his mum and grandfather.

“I was probably 23 when my mum died,” he said. “She died of cancer basically a year after my grandfather died. She was too young.”

The Kathleen Gilett has been moved to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia ahead of the 80th Sydney to Hobart race.

Although he has never had the chance to sail on the Kathleen, Tomaszewski clocked up tens of thousands of miles on board his grandfather’s other boat, purchased by Earl after returning from his round-the-world voyage. This one, he named after his daughter and Tomaszewski’s mother, Maris.

The Maris was the setting for Tomaszewski’s own love story. He met his wife aboard, and the couple sailed on the yacht to their wedding. They named their daughter Maris too.

The Maris will be reunited with the Kathleen Gillett for the 80th Sydney to Hobart, with the former to be paraded across the harbour before the start on Boxing Day.

“I felt quite nostalgic and emotional going down and spending time on [Kathleen] the other day,” Tomaszewski said. “Even though I’ve spent so little time on Kathleen, I can close my eyes and understand everything that’s gone into being part of them.

“I can sort of feel my grandfather’s presence in all the nooks and crannies and corners. His touch and his aesthetic and ideology sort of permeates everywhere.”

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