M O O N T
A 1931 |
||||
RETURN TO THE HOMEPAGE
THE OCEAN LINERS |
||||
|
Welcome to our Moonta website celebrating this last survivor of the famous Australian coastal liners. The Moonta was built in 1931 by the Burmeister & Wain shipyard, Copenhagen, Denmark for the Adelaide Steamship Company and their Australian coastal liner service. She was retired from service in 1955 and sold to Hellenic Maritime Lines. She was renamed Lydia and sailed on the Marseilles to Egypt via Italy and Greece service. In 1966 she was retired from service and laid up in Piraeus, Greece. However she would not be scrapped as the Lydia was acquired by a French organisation and taken to Marseilles. There her engines and propeller screw were removed and she was converted for use as a casino and restaurant ship. She was installed in her new home at Le Barcares in the Langedoc-Rousillion region of France on the Mediterranean coast. There a special basin was cut into the sand for her and when she was in place the basin was filled with sand thus making her now landlocked. Today she is a feature of this Mediterranean resort as the Casino Le Lydia and is owned by the Partouche Group. So remarkably this is the sole survivor of the Australian coastal liners and she lives on and will continue to inspire present and future generations on a beach in southern France!
|
T.S.M.V.
MOONTA ~ The Last of the Australian Coastal Liners ~
|
||
|
||||
Adelaide -
Port Lincoln - Port Germein - Port Pine - Port Augusta - Port Hughes -
Adelaide This Website is based on
content from the
SS Maritime website (www.ssmaritime.com)
with the kind permission of Reuben Goossens
|
(c) The AJN Transport Britain Collection 2008 A Edward Elliott