About Time Travel Sailing Ships And Dirty Water

Time travel, sailing ships and dirty water have been on my mind a lot lately!

I remember playing cowboys and Indians as a boy (terribly politically incorrect of me, I know) and wishing that I lived in the old west, but I’m pretty sure now that I would have found it hard to survive. No gadgets, no television, no flushing toilets, no fast food outlets… and dirty water. And I don’t ride a horse…

I used to ride a horse mind you, but I’d probably fall off now!

The dirty water thing came to me this evening as I cleaned out the dishwasher (did I mention that they didn’t have them back then either?). I had been thinking of Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly in the Back To The Future trilogy when he was offered a glass of water. The water was brown due to the sediment it contained.

The color of the water wouldn’t be the main problem though – you’d have to wonder what was living in it.
A 21st century time traveler would need to have an iron gut to survive.

Talking to a friend about travel recently, he mentioned how he’d contracted a case of “Delhi belly” while traveling through Asia.

Confused by the term Delhi Belly? Think Montezuma’s Revenge…

One of the advantages of living in a Western country is the standard of the water supply. One of the disadvantages is that our systems aren’t used to anything less. Quality water supply for developing countries is something that the world needs to work on, but that’s not the focus of this blog post.

I’ve been working on a rather complex history project!

It involves situations that would have been common to emigrants from Britain and Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For instance, in the life of one person I’ve been studying, the trip to Australia took about four months on a sailing ship, leaving England towards the end of summer in August, and stepping off the boat into a blazing Australian summer in December.

Everything would have been different to what he was used to, and he knew that he’d probably never see his family again. At least the fictional Marty McFly got to go home to his 1985 family.

Anyway, this rambling post is my way of saying that I am about to start a series of posts about a couple of generations of at least two families, and how they came to move to Australia, and what happened when they did. I hope you’ll join me for the journey. Thankfully, we won’t have to worry about Delhi belly or Montezuma’s Revenge while we travel through time!