Leslie Poles Hartley nailed an essential truth of life when he pinned the first sentence of his novel The Go Between. "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there," he famously observed.
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Nowhere is that more true than in the field of travel. Today, when most parts of Australia can be reached within hours on a cut price train ride and the fleshpots of Europe are less than two days away by the same medium, it is hard to comprehend the lengths to which our forebears went to get from here to someplace else.
Travel advertisements from a century ago, with their heavy emphasis on ships and trains and with virtually no references to planes and automobiles, are clear proof of just how much the world has changed.
In 1914, for example, if you wished to travel from Sydney to Perth or Fremantle the best option was to hop on a boat.
It was certainly more reliable than the limited overland alternatives, the pace leisurely and the sea voyage likely to be of benefit to jaded spirits.
The front page of one August 1914 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald carried no less than three columns of shipping advertisements.
Companies such as the Melbourne Steamship Company, The Adelaide Steamship Company (which later became famous for matters which had little or nothing to do with transport), Ocean Excursions and the Huddart Parker Line all did their bit to link cities and townships scattered along the coast of the southern continent.
The challenges of building roads and railway lines in rugged terrain were reflected in the fact it was viable, even at this relatively late date, for The North Coast Steam Navigation Company to offer passage between Sydney and places such as Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour and Nambucca Heads.
Travellers wishing to venture further afield were best advised to inquire at the offices of P&O, The Blue Funnel Line, the Union Line or the E and A Line.
The American-owned Oceanic Steamship company, an interloper in the market, was trying to take advantage of the unpleasantness in Europe by advising potential passenger that it sailed the perilous seas under "a neutral flag".
Given Cunard's RMS Lusitania had been sunk a few months before with the loss of almost 1200 lives this marketing strategy was probably successful.
