And yes, the skies do look a bit different from ours just now. John Buchanan, engine of the Argyll Sporting and Classic Car Club whose vehicles and exploits grace and excite Argyll – and visitors to Inveraray Castle who swarm around the vehicles when their owners are having lunch in the cafe there – is with family in South Australia, in Adelaide.
A couple of hundred yards from where he is in Adelaide, is the hull of the clipper Carrick that spent years in rotting decline on a slipway in the Clyde, in the ‘care’ of a maritime museum.
The Carrick saw competing bids to restore and host her if she could be moved from the Clyde.
The City of Newcastle had a strong and energetic case since the clipper was built in Sunderland [launched 1864] – but the ship’s trade route, which saw her make 23 annual return voyages from London and Plymouth to Adelaide and saw Prince Philip rename her the City of Adelaide in 2013, 12 years after the decision to do so was taken and just in time for the long preparation of getting her secured and on the move by sea to the City whose campaign to have her back there was unrelentingly determined.
