This year at Stella Maris Melbourne has seen an overall increase of seafarers visiting our centre. For the first time in many years we have had over 15,000 seafarers come and visit our centre.

Though telephones remain still very popular as a means of contacting families and friends back home, the internet is ever increasing in popularity. The use of laptops is also increasing greatly, with some vessels having over half of their crew in possession of a laptop.

By owning a laptop, crew members can now also purchase one of the many USB Wireless dongles as sold by Telstra, Optus, Virgin, Vodafone or 3. These can be used in most ports of Australia to allow the crew member to contact home even if he is unable to leave his vessel. However, charges are involved with this, and thow they may seem a little high now, I am sure that they will decrease dramatically over time.

For those who do not have the luxury of a laptop, our centre has 10 computer terminals that seafarers can use. These can be used for checking emails, catching up on news back home, downloading music or video clips, updating virus or other software programs and of course, in conjunction with webcam and microphone, they are used to contact family and friends back home.

Programs like MSN, Yahoo, Skype, Gadu Gadu and QQ are very popular amongst the seafarers to find out from family and friends what has been happening back home. Websites like Orkut, Facebook, Friendster and Youtube are also popular for groups of friends to upload and share their photos and experiences.

Manager Rom Kucera welcoming Feng Tao from China. Feng was the 15,000th seafarer to visit our centre for 2008. Feng is an engineer aboard the vessel ANL Wyong. Feng comes from the city of Dalian and this is his first year aboard the vessel. He was presented with a Stella Maris cap and polo shirt and given a congratulatory cold stubbie of VB.