There was nothing particularly unusual about March 26 1954, that marked it as anything particularly auspicious. On the surface it was just another drab and over-cast day in Australia’s southern state of Victoria. The only bright spot for Mr and Mrs Palmer that dull day, would be the birth of their son, Clive.
Clive Palmer would go on to found a mining company in Western Australia where he would make a very sizeable fortune.
As with all things Clive Palmer - who once listed litigation as amongst his hobbies, he spent his mining career embroiled in legal stoushes ranging from, but not limited to - a disastrous venture into Australian “Footie” - tussles with journalists and scrapes with the Chinese government.
Nothing in his past at the time had indicated that he had a deep interest in anything maritime, or even for that matter history, but then he did something completely out of the box - even for him.
He announced he was building a new Titanic.
Lauded at the time, and reported here in November 2013, it was at the time, to be an exact replica of the original - albeit with the addition of more lifeboats. Palmer’s Titanic 2 would reportedly furnish each stateroom with a full wardrobe of costumes so that the guests would all be able to participate fully in the re-creation of one of Maritime History’s most infamous maiden voyages.
Well, hopefully not fully recreated, Clive intended on using his ship more than once.
At the time of his announcement in 2012, he garnered world-wide attention for his project, particularly with the claim that the keel had already been laid in China and it would be completed by 2016. The Chinese shipyard would go on to deny any such contract had ever been signed and the fact that China had never built a cruise ship that size increased the incredulity of his sceptics.
Coincidently, on the tidal wave of his attention-grabbing headlines, he announced that he was entering Australian Politics.
Now the cynics amongst us would question the timing of his political announcement and the fact that over the next few years, Palmer would put out Titanic press releases coinciding with his political campaign milestones, such as his election to the Australian Federal Parliament in 2013 and the subsequent problems he experienced in that seat.
Over the years these Titanic 2 press releases related various changes to the original White Star design - a different hull, more decks, a disco, a helipad, balconies in the funnels and that her maiden voyage would begin in Dubai - the list went on so much so that any similarity with the original Titanic blueprint, apart from its four funnels and a hull, was hard to see.
This was all from a politician who once mooted creating a real Jurassic Park on his golf course at Coolum (reportedly abandoned and derelict) and also claimed that Barak Obama and the CIA were trying to close down his mining operation - the source of his apparent billion dollar wealth. He also at one time, announced he was building a new Zeppelin airship … read the “Hindenburg”… I see a pattern emerging. The ill-fated Hindenburg was possibly the world’s most dangerous dirigible, whose destruction in a fiery heap one spring day, signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a move toward commercial aircraft, which incidentally, was the beginning of the end of the traditional ocean-going liners later in the 1960’s.
Funnily enough, while the smoke and mirrors and bait and switch game of “look over there” and problems with his mining company’s finances and political predicaments, ballooned virtually unnoticed.
In April 2016, the administrators for Palmer's now closed nickel refining company, Queensland Nickel, alleged that almost $6 million had been taken from that company to pay for the development and marketing of the Titanic 2. Administrators indicated that they were seeking to recover this money.
Things had gone thankfully quiet on the “Palmer” front until recently and lo and behold, an announcement was made that the Titanic 2 is back on track with a new launch date of 2022.
The cynics amongst us would prick their ears up - watch this space. The game of smoke and mirrors has restarted. I bet right now, Clive Palmer’s next business move is germinating somewhere some-how while our attention is being diverted elsewhere.
Everyone grab a seat in the lifeboat while you can - I sense that there are icebergs about.
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