EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA tea menu
Maker
Australian National Line
(1956 - 1998)
Date13 May 1966
Object number00017258
NameMenu
MediumInk on paper
DimensionsOverall: 216 x 127 mm, 0.005 kg
ClassificationsEphemera
Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Warren Plummer
DescriptionThis tea menu, which was on board the Australian National Line’s TSMV EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA on 13 May 1966, features text indicating the ship’s Master and the cruise location, ‘en Route Sydney to Bell Bay’. It also has a photograph of the convict built church at Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasmania.HistoryIn 1965, Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company Ltd built a new passenger liner for the Australian National Line (ANL) in Sydney. EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA was built to service the route between Sydney and Tasmania, which had not been in operation since 1940. EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA was a distinguished ship in that she was the first large drive-on drive-off ferry to be built in the world, and the largest passenger ship ever built in Australia.
Although EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA rejuvenated the Tasmanian tourism industry, union disputes and a poor booking system had serious financial implications for ANL. Consequently, in early 1972, ANL announced that the vessel was to be transferred from Sydney to Melbourne. After alterations were completed, EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA sailed between Melbourne and Devonport. This continued until 1985, when it was withdrawn from service and sold due to financial difficulties.
There are a large number of shipboard menus in the museum’s collection and a vast majority of these menus appeared in passenger liners. This shipboard menu is one of a series of seven tea, lunch and dinner menus collected by a passenger travelling between Hobart and Sydney. They feature predominately Australian cuisine, along with picturesque photographs of various locations including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Surfers Paradise, Hobart and Port Arthur Historic Site.SignificanceThe sailing route between Tasmania and mainland Australia has long been of great historical importance, first through the movement of settlers and convicts and secondly through the Bass Strait passenger trade. Shipboard menus were the most common type of souvenir collected by passengers. This particular menu was collected by a passenger on board EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA. It illustrates how the cruise liner appealed to both local and international passengers’ tastes, by creating a menu featuring a range of Australian foods and scenic photographs depicting Australia’s famous coastlines.
