At Sea

It is Sunday, March 1, our second day at sea between Brisbane and Cairns. What a beautiful morning; we woke up at about 6:30 and looked out the door to see islands very close. If you want to get our location, we are just slightly south of Townsville. We spent most of the morning on the balcony drinking coffee and watching the islands drift by… we are only going about 12 knots and the temp is about 75 so it is really perfect. We will go to the Sunday Brunch at 10:30 and I’ll try to add more later.
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After a great brunch we did NOTHING. We spent the day reading and napping.

Brisbane, Australia

We encountered a very strong current during the night and were an hour late getting into port in Brisbane. We were docked far from the city at the grain terminal. They have some tents erected at this dock for cruise passengers (think DIA). Since we were on a tour it didn’t make much difference to us, but it did mean that there was a 45 minute shuttle ride to the city center for those going on their own.
Brisbane is another beautiful city; it’s very young, the average age is just 33 and the city reflects that. There are not many old buildings - it’s mostly new glass skyscrapers.

We had booked an afternoon tour to the Koala Park, but it was canceled and we were moved to the morning tour. We usually book afternoon tours as they are less full - this time it wasn’t full enough to happen. Oh well. Since the ship was an hour late into port we only had an hour at the Koala park which wasn’t enough time but the schedule was dictated by having to catch our “riverboat” for a cruise back to the city.

All in all I give this tour a C- ; pretty much what I usually expect of a ship tour. The park was very commercial and most of the Koalas and other animals were sleeping. I did pay the $$ to hold a koala and have my picture taken - she was pretty cute. (BTW those aren’t wrinkles on my face… they are funny shadows). The river cruise lasted about 1 ½ hours and just passed many multi-million dollar houses bordering the river.

Ben- My hiking and bridge climbing days are probably over. I had an accident a couple years ago that shattered my pelvis and has left me somewhat disabled. I thought you might have noticed the cane in a couple of the pictures.

Sydney, Australia

What a beautiful city! We didn’t rush off the ship as most people did but we were off and at the Hop-on Hop-off bus stop by 10:00. We did the loop of most of the city and then got off at the Aquarium. There were only about 6 people in line to buy tickets so we made a restroom stop - bad choice. When we got back to the ticket area it was packed - tour buses had arrived. We got a couple espressos and waited a bit to see if it would thin out, but it stayed full for a long time so I decided I really didn’t need to see it that bad. Waiting in lines is not something I like to do! I decided to finish the bus tour and return to the ship and Jim took the monorail to the Maritime Museum to tour the Destroyer and submarine.

Sydney is a beautiful mixture of historic Victorian buildings and modern skyscrapers. It reminds me a bit of Denver as the historic buildings are about the same age, but they have done a much better job of preservation. Way too many of the buildings in Denver were torn down in the 50’s & 60’s before they realized their value and started the preservation efforts.

This was also “turn over day”. Those people that were only on segment 1 disembarked and we have new faces onboard. We also have a new Captain and some changes in crew and staff.

Bernie, Tasmania

We docked at Bernie at about 8:00 this morning. It is a gray and cloudy day with temps about 65. I’m hoping it might clear this afternoon for our tour to Wings Wildlife Park. We waited until 8:30 to go to the buffet for breakfast so that all the morning tour people would already be gone. After we ate we looked down at the pier and saw a person in a red robe greeting people getting off the ship. We quickly came back to the cabin for the camera and went down to meet him. He is the Mayor of Bernie and he and his wife greet all the cruise ships. They will have 23 this year - three of which are this week. We talked with them for some time and I was disappointed to learn that they have penguins here…. But they don’t come into shore until after 6:00pm and we sail at 5:30. I want to stay and see the penguins!

Our tour was wonderful. We were in a 55 passenger bus with only about 25 people so Jim and I could each have a window. We drove through some wonderful country side and small towns. It is very pretty here with all the flowers, but our guide said they are in a drought so the fields are dry.

Wings Wildlife Park is a private family run animal rehabilitation center. It is a great place to visit as you can get in the pens with a number of the animals to feed them. We saw the Tasmanian Devils just as they were being fed. They are cute but quite vicious - I wouldn’t want to have one mad at me. They also had wombats, koalas, kangaroos, birds, reptiles, emus, and even a couple camels and a buffalo. Since there wasn’t a guide around when we got to those pens I couldn’t ask how they received them.

The Koalas were very cute but I fell in love with a baby wombat… they wouldn’t let me bring him back home with me. I also really liked the pen with the kangaroos; we got a handful of grain and were able to hand-feed them. There was a mother with a baby - he was out of the pouch eating leaves as I approached. Even though I was very slow and stayed fairly far away he ran back and jumped into the pouch. In about a minute you could see him turn himself over (that can’t be too comfortable for mama) and out came his head. He stayed in there the rest of the time even as we were feeding mama kangaroo.

We had over 2 hours to explore the park and then the bus took a slightly different route back to the ship. We traveled through some mountains that were very beautiful with all the unique trees and large ferns. Our guide was pretty good and named many of the trees and other flora we were seeing and also points of interest. For a ship tour I give this one a high rating.
When we got back to the ship there was a Pipe band playing on the dock for our sail-away. We watched them for a few minutes and got a few pictures and then went to the finals of the boar-building contest. There were 4 entries - one tipped and lost the required cargo (a six-pack). Two of the boats were quite exceptional; their builders had put a lot of time building them. The other two were just trays with plastic bottles underneath for flotation and a bit of decoration on top. The winner was the one built by the kids even though the “Ghetto Princess” the other detailed one was probably better … it’s hard when you are competing against kids.

Cruisephobic - I am aware that we can check the news and stocks via the web... and we have also had FOX network all along, but it's been easier (at least more pleasant)to be oblivious!