A Well Navigated Life
Graham Newland on the helm of GRETEL II
Last week’s story about the life of Peter Mounsey, produced a flood of comment and correspondence. He obviously affected many peoples lives in a positive way.
One such of these emails came from Jan Newland, daughter of Graham Newland. It reads…
What a fantastic article. I was only a kid when Peter and Lesley stayed at our house in MIddle Cove. Mom and Dad (Graham Newland) were great buddies. How can I get in touch with Peter because he might be interested in the book I have just published about Graham?
Well after further correspondence we have learned a bit more about Jan’s book.
The hidden life of one of Australia’s greatest ocean racing navigators is discovered in a box of scrapbooks
When Graham Newland’s daughter inherited a box of old scrapbooks, she had no inkling of how rich her father’s life had been.
Of course, Jan Newland knew about the two Sydney to Hobart victories her father had won when she was young. There were rumours of Admiral’s Cup glory while she was living in Perth. She had heard mention of other contested cups including the Congressional Cup and the One Ton Cup but she lived in London and Toronto. And then there was the race from Bermuda to Copenhagen using nothing but a sextant to find the way and the America’s Cup in Newport, Rhode Island on Gretel II.
Graham helming LORITA MARIE in the TransAtlantic Race 1966
Turning the pages of the scrapbooks she also found a sailor who had been toasted by the Duke of Edinburgh and partied with the Aga Khan.
Graham had raced with the who’s who of Australia’s golden age of racing. His skills were sought out by the great yacht designer, Olin Stephens from New York. Known colloquially as The Yacht Doctor, the boats Graham had tuned for success stand as a litany of that age; Vittoria, Ragamuffin, Love & War, Stormy Petrel, Salacia II, Mark Twain. Queequeg.
The scrapbooks highlighted just how important Graham had been in making Australian yachts, not just contenders, but victors, on the international scene.
But Graham was also a quiet man, as happy tinkering in his engineering workshop as he was, sailing on Sydney Harbour. He wasn’t a man to blow his own trumpet. However, the accolades in newspaper clippings and correspondence outline the glory over a forty-year career had transfixed his daughter, so Jan read on.
One of his greatest achievements was the creation of the very first Ragamuffin and being the first mate for several years. This is an excerpt of a letter to Dennis Miller, famous English yachtsman in September 1968.
In 1974 Graham turned his back on sailing and purchased a 1,650 acre farm near Gulgong in NSW called Tarawong. It only took a few years for Graham to improve the property into
one of the most productive in the district before the call of racing had him back on the water as navigator, tactician and part time helm on Gretel II in the America’s Cup.
It wasn’t just in the sailing and farming world that her father had achieved. He brought a husband and wife run airline business in Mt Molloy in Queensland with just two planes and the longest mail run in the world. Within a few years Graham had enlarged the fleet to twenty, with services operating throughout the Top End of Australia.
As he got older, Graham settled on one last major quest - to cruise from Australia to Alaska. It was a challenge that would take him three attempts as a civil war, volcanic eruption and illness attempted to stop the dream. With friends and family, he ended up spending three glorious summers tracing the Inside Passage of Alaska followed by an amazing journey across the Pacific Ocean bringing Siandra II home to Sydney.
The book presents a captivating portrayal of an Australian sailing pioneer by weaving together numerous anecdotes and a collage of materials from the scrapbooks in an engaging portrait of one of Australia’s beloved sailing trailblazers in that era. This is history, a story of recognition that needed to be told, one that brings to life a man revered by many who also happened to be Jan’s beloved Dad.
“Graham was a quiet achiever in the golden era, when Australia took on the sailing world. He was one of the very best crew mates I ever sailed with.” Sir James Hardy
We should make it clear that the editors at SWS haven’t read the book as yet, but with Christmas coming up and the price due to rise to commercial levels very shortly, we thought it would be remiss of us not to let the readers know about the story of one of Australia’s most pre-eminent sailors.
To Purchase a copy CLICK HERE
