Crossing the Line

Highly commended

2025
acrylic paint on canvas
40.6 x 50.8 cm

This painting interprets my personal naval experience of the Crossing the Line ceremony aboard HMAS Perth in 1997.

As mariners cross the equator, they leave behind their old selves — the pollywogs — and are reborn as shellbacks. This ancient maritime rite of passage transforms a ship’s deck into a stage for mythology, where King Neptune and his court preside over a chaotic blend of tradition, camaraderie, and absurd theatre.

Neptune’s guards — the bears — oversee the ceremony dressed in costumes fashioned from old potato-sacks, and playfully wield foam batons to corral the pollywogs before the king.

In this work, I revisit my own crossing — the symbolic pantomime, the laughter, the uneasy reverence as we genuflected before the unseen king upon an altar of shot mats. The deck, usually grey, is awash with greens and aquas from the specially fermented anointing formula, which is slopped onto the pollywogs like a christening.

Through this work, I reflect on the ritual’s human core: the bonds of sailors, the transformation of ordinary men into part of something timeless, and the enduring humour that helps us weather life at sea.