John spent his 10th Christmas and saw in 1949 on the SS Volendam during a five-week trip from Rotterdam, Holland to Melbourne, Australia.

He still has the certificate he was presented with when the boat crossed the equator on January 5.

The original SS Volendam bore little resemblance to its successor.

“It wasn’t a pleasure cruise I assure you,” Mr Polak recalls.

Segregation between men and women and bunk beds stacked four high meant 10 year-old John slept on the top bunk.

“My parents wanted to get away from Europe,” he said.

“We had to survive the war and then we had to get away from communism.”

John’s parents, Ladislav (later called Larry) and Arma both survived several years in concentration camps in what is now the Czech Republic because they remained able to work.

Eventually his parents were liberated and brought back to their hometown where John and his sister were in an orphanage.

John along with Jan, his wife of some 40 years, will visit Holland in six weeks time.

“It’s interesting that this ship has come in now,” he said.

“I’ll be in Holland soon. I was there 21 years ago when it was still under communism, now I want to see what it was like without communism.

“What I expect to do is visit all those places and just see what I can remember and if what I remember is still there.”