Adelaide

What a delightful city! They have done a marvelous job of conserving beautiful architecture and providing green space. Fortunately, we had 2 days here. The first day was spent touring the city.

We stopped at Tandanya, which is the National Aboriginal Cultural Center. The name means “red kangaroo”. The center is getting ready to celebrate their 25^th anniversary and had just hung the painting shown in Picture 1.  It is titled “Night & Day Dreaming” and was painted in 1988 be one of the most famous aboriginal painters, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. (1932-2002) It is huge, approximately 8 feet by 10 feet, and was found folded up among his belongs. This is the first time it has been stretched and hung. A few years ago, one of his large paintings sold for $2.4 million, so this is an amazing find. Unfortunately, since it was not found until after his death, we do not have the artist’s interpretation of the drawing.

At Tandanya, we also learned about Didgeridoos. The aborigine in Picture 2 is showing how they are played. To make one, a sapling is found and placed over an ant colony. The ants eat and weaken the central part of the sapling. The carver then easily removes any material in the center. The player made both of these didgeridoos and was able to get an amazing variety of sounds from them. Rick chatted with him about how to play it and learned that you hum or buzz your lips, while doing circular breathing. With proper breathing, this player has played for an hour straight without stopping. Rick describes the sound as “like a bagpipe drone with sound effects”.

Our second stop was at Carrick Hill, which is shown in Picture 3. It was built by Bill and Ursula Hayward, descendants of 2 of Adelaide’s most prominent (and wealthy) families—he brought Coca Cola to Australia. Carrick Hill was built to look like a 17^th century English manor house. This style was chosen to incorporate all the purchases made on their yearlong honeymoon.  In England, they found Beaudesert, a Tudor mansion that was about to be torn down, due to the expense of maintaining it. From the demolition sale, they brought paneling, doors, staircases and windows to Australia. One of their most amazing purchases was the grand staircase shown in Picture 4. When complete, they fitted the house with an eclectic mix of period furniture and contemporary art. Without children, the Haywards’ bequeathed the house and contents to South Australia.

On our second day, we went to the Barossa Valley to drink wine. Our first stop was at Seppeltsfield Winery, which creates excellent wine and provides a good historical cross-section of the Barossa Valley. In the mid-1800s, Catholic Germany was persecuting Lutheran Germans—threatening to take land and money. The Seppelts were a wealthy family of Lutheran tobacco growers, who sold their land and migrated to South Australia. They also brought 13 families, who would work for them. They had to “make do” in this remote locations and built the sideboard in Picture 5 from packing crates they used to transport their belongings.

They tried growing tobacco in this part of Australia and it failed. So, with a little experience in wine making, they started this winery in the 1860s. Picture 6 shows the cellars, which were built in the 1870s. While they have made many varieties of wine, they have become famous for their tawny port. 

Each year since 1878 they have saved one barrel of port and put it away until its 100^th anniversary, when it is finally sold. Picture 7 shows the 1899 tawny port. The 100-year-old port retails for $330 per 100 ml—that’s less than ½ c. A full bottle retails for $7000-8000. We tasted 21-year-old port, which was quite good. We asked how 100-year-old port would compare and were told that it tastes almost like toffee.

Our second wine tasting was at Jacob’s Creek winery, which is a household name about everywhere—we can get it at the grocery store.  The winery was started by another German, who migrated to South Australia in 1837, Johann Gramp. In 1847 he founded the first commercial vineyard in the Barossa Valley, on the banks of Jacob’s Creek. The view across the vineyards from the Visitor center, as shown in Picture 8, is beautiful. They are best known for their Shiraz, the most important and widely planted red grape variety in Australia. Shiraz grapes are shown in Picture 9.

As we’ve found in several countries, the best known commercial wineries do not provide the best touring/tasting experience. The tours are short and the wines tasted are generally not their best. Seppeltsfield was definitely the best experience.

As Picture 10 shows, we’re a long way from home! Currently crossing the rough and chilly Southern Ocean on our way to Western Australia.

Kangaroo Island

This was our second trip to Kangaroo Island. Several years ago we visited it with the North Carolina Zoological Society and found it to be an amazing collection of wildlife. This time we only had a few hours, so we concentrated on a very small portion of the island.

We first made a brief stop at Pennington Bay to see the beautiful vista in Picture 1. Australia is one glorious beach after another.

Our second stop was at Seal Bay Conservation Park. The seal family contains walrus’, true seals and eared seals, which are generally called sea lions. The beach shown in picture 2 is home to approximately 600 endangered Australian Sea Lions. These are large animals, with the largest males weighing up to 600 pounds.

At any one time, there are only about 300 sea lions on the beach. The remaining sea lions are feeding at the bottom of the Southern Ocean up to 60 miles offshore. Each adult sets out for 3 days of hunting food. They cannot sleep during that time because they must constantly be on the lookout for great white sharks and orcas, who find them quite tasty. After 3 days they return to the beach to collapse for 3 days of rest. Then the cycle repeats. Picture 3 shows a close-up of one tired sea lion!

The mothers are the most amazing. They give birth and are pregnant again within 2 weeks. So they swim out, leaving babies onshore, feed, return to baby, who then nurses for 3 days straight. At the same time, mother needs nourishment for the growing fetus. They are the hardest-working mothers on the planet! Picture 4 shows a baby waiting for its mother to return. Picture 5 shows a picture of a very tired mother returning to a hungry baby, who is following her to a place where she can rest. They climbed a large sand dune, coming to rest under the boardwalk, as shown in Picture 6.

The laziest sea lions are the juvenile males, who haven’t reached sexual maturity and, therefore, don’t have to fight other males to dominate the beach and they still depend on Mother for food (for up to 18 months!). The only thing the young males do is play-fighting other males. Picture 7 shows 2 young males trying to look assertive. Picture 8 shows some of the early attempt to fight.

It was a great day spent marveling at these animals, followed by a glorious full moon as we sailed away from Kangaroo Island (Picture 9).

Melbourne and Geelong

On the way from Eden to Melbourne our ship stopped for a day in Burnie, Tasmania. We blew it off!!! We’d been there before and it’s not real exciting…. A second day in Melbourne would have been preferable.

Melbourne is a different story. We love Melbourne! It’s a beautiful city, it’s easy to get from one place to another and it has an interesting history. We joined tour guide Kenneth Parker for an architectural walking tour called “Arcades and Allies”.

At about the same time that we had our Gold Rush in California, the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, had a gold rush. Melbourne has a wonderful natural harbor and quickly became the place where everyone landed and the capital of the state. Gold poured in, money poured in and there was a sudden boom in building. From mid-19^th century, through the early 20^th century, a huge amount of building occurred. The results are still lovely.

Banks, in particular, flourished as shown in pictures 1 and 2 show. Picture 1 is the ANZ Bank building from the outside. Picture 2 shows the interior of a former bank that is now an office building.

Melbourne is particularly known for its arcades. Pictures 3 and 4 show the floor and ceiling of one arcade. Many are Victorian and Edwardian, but we also saw some that are Art Deco. We also saw alleys that have been converted to spontaneous art galleries and sidewalk cafes. It was delightful to wander.

Picture 5 shows the beautiful. Flinders train station, which is in the heart of downtown. Diagonally across the street from the train station is the cathedral, which is not particularly memorable. What was interesting was the peek into Victorian life in Melbourne, as shown in Picture 6. To one side of the cathedral we found this sitting area for women only. Special areas in parks and theaters and other places were reserved for women, so they did not have to suffer from the amorous attentions of all those nasty men from the gold fields!

Across the street from the Cathedral is the very modern Federation Square, where we found the “art” shown in Picture 7. This was an exhibit to encourage people to recycle their mobiles.

By the way, while the weather looks gloomy on both days, it's actually haze from bush fires in other parts of Victoria. They're desperate for rain, both to help alleviate the drought and to improve the air quality.

The next day we spent in Geelong, which is a short sail across the harbor from Melbourne. It’s a near-perfect city. It’s 200,000 plus inhabitants have all the necessities right there, although they are a quick train ride from Melbourne and they’re on the ocean. What more could they want???? We met friends, who planned the day to be spent along the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road follows the southern coast from Geelong to the west. It was built following WWI, providing employment for returning veterans. Australia suffered horribly in that war. With a total population of 5 million, they provided 300,000 soldiers and sailors to the British war effort. 60,000 were killed and 180,000 injured. Our friend, Keith, told us that his grandfather had 4 sisters who were engaged to 4 soldiers, who went away to war. None returned.

The road alternates between beautifully rugged seascapes, like the one shown in picture 8, and lovely beach villages, like Lorne, which is shown in picture 9.

When we turned inland to head back to Geelong we found a small grove of eucalyptus trees along side the road and 3 sleepy koalas. Picture 10 shows one in the typical koala position. They sleep 20 hours per day and eat eucalyptus leaves for the remaining 4 hours. Picture 11 shows one who has just woken and is taking a stretch. What a treat! Koalas are marsupials, like kangaroos and ARE NOT bears, even though they are wrongly called “koala bears”.

There are many kinds of eucalyptus trees in Australia, but koalas only eat a couple kinds.  Picture 12 shows the flowers on particular type of eucalyptus. Don’t know if that’s one of the types koalas will eat (the tree we saw them eating from had white blossoms). But the color of this type of eucalyptus was so spectacular that we thought it deserved a picture!

Returning to Geelong, the “lady” in Picture 13 greeted us. This is called a bollard and a local resident, Jan Mitchell, who has since died, created over 100 of these. They are now part of the Baywalk Bollard Trail, which depicts many of the characters who molded Geelong’s history.

It was a wonderful day with good friends, who are justifiably proud of their part of Australia. How lucky we were to have our own private guides!

On to Kangaroo Island and Adelaide.

Sydney and Eden

Greetings from Australia!

We spent 2 great days in Sydney on the 8^th and 9^th. We sailed in at sunrise and enjoyed the beautiful backward look at the headlands at sunrise, as shown in Picture 1. We were docked right at Circular Quay, between the Opera House and Bridge, as shown in Picture 2. We could walk everywhere.

On the first day, we went separate ways. Rick went “shopping with the Chef “ at the fish market. He learned about selecting good fish (and the vendor where you purchase them), saw some “interesting” sea creatures and enjoyed the negotiations involved in purchasing 40 kilos of each type of fish at a time. Picture 3 shows some of the assortment of fish and Picture 4 shows the fish actually being loaded to take to the ship. The vendor would not accept American dollars, so the Chef stopped at an ATM on the way back to the ship and was able to pay in Australian dollars when it was delivered. Later that afternoon, the Chef sent samples of the sashimi grade tuna, salmon and kingfish, plus some smoked eel to our stateroom. We skipped the eel!

Meanwhile, Betsy climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It takes a total of 3 hours, although only about an hour is spent on the actual arch itself. The remainder of time involves suiting up, getting training on how to climb the ladders and physically getting to the point when you start going up. You cannot carry a camera, so you come away only with the picture of your group at the top, as shown in Picture 5. Picture 6 shows what it looks like from the ground. That’s not Betsy’s actual group, but gives you some idea of what it’s like, Views on top are spectacular and the climb itself is strenuous enough to make you feel like you’ve accomplished something.

On the second day, we took the ferry to Manley, where they were in the midst of the Australian Open Surfing Championship. While we cannot speak with authority, it appeared that the waves were not providing great runs, but we saw lots of tanned, young, thin, beautiful people. Picture 7 shows the gorgeous beach in Manley. We then climbed up toward the head, although we didn’t get that far.  We probably hiked a couple miles, along the beach, along the rocky coast and then up onto the plateau at the entrance to the harbor. We had fish & chips for lunch, ice cream at our favorite ice cream shop and then sailed back to Sydney. As Picture 8 shows, one never tires of sailing through the harbor toward Sydney.

Yesterday we were in Eden, which is a town of 4000 people, further down the coast from Sydney. The locals turn out when a ship arrives, because they only get 3 or 4 a year and yesterday there were 2 in one day—our 450 passengers and the Astor’s 600 passengers. We didn’t tarry around town; frankly, there wasn’t much town to tarry in!

We headed north to Ben Boyd National Park for a bush walk with an aborigine—actually he was only half aborigine, but has written books and done much to understand and share traditional life of aborigines. We learned about the different types of plants used for food and medicine and saw early tools used to accomplish daily tasks. The information was great and the scenery spectacular, as shown in Pictures 9 and 10.

By the way, it appears that Ben Boyd was a local entrepreneur, who invested money in the area, trying to develop the Capital of New South Wales here. His efforts failed and he finely up and left. No one could explain to us why the parked was named after him????

But the most exciting things for us, was watching 2 local species of animals. The first was the Goana Lizard. It is a type of Monitor Lizard that slinks along the ground and climbs trees, as shown in Pictures 11 and 12. The specimen shown in the pictures is about 5 feet long, including tail. It was a bit intimidating. The close-up picture shows its face and claws. You do NOT want to tangle with it—the claws not only hurt, but collect debris from the carrion it eats and you can get a nasty infection.

Picture 13 shows one of the 2 animals everyone comes to Australia to see—the kangaroo. (The other, of course, would be the koala.) This one is a gray kangaroo that posed nicely for us. We also saw a Mother with a good-sized baby in its weighted-down pouch, but couldn’t get a good picture.

We’re at sea today, but we visit Tasmania tomorrow, Melbourne the next day and Geelong the following day.

Wellington and Nelson

Our day in Wellington was near perfect—beautiful blue skies and 70 degrees (sorry friends in the US).  We began the day with a 3+-mile walk from the ship, through the harbor area and into the downtown of Wellington. It’s a lovely city. In the afternoon we boarded a bus and headed to Pencarrow Station.

Wellington Harbor is roughly shaped like a question mark, with Wellington at the end of the hook. We drove around the bay to the harbor entrance on the east side. The harbor entrance is less than half a mile wide, contains rocks sticking up on both sides and experiences significant winds and currents through the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands. So entering the harbor is not an easy task. Picture 1 shows the harbor entrance from the east side.

Pencarrow Station is a good-sized farm, where they raise sheep and cattle and dabble a bit in the tourism business. As the views in Pictures 2 and 3 show, it has a commanding view of the Harbor entrance and Cook Strait.  We watched sheep shearing and sheep herding as shown in pictures 4 and 5. They use 2 types of herding dogs. One large mixed breed (some lab and Doberman plus other stuff) is used to make lots of noise and drive away. The sheep are not penned, so this dog is taken up in the hills and drives the sheep back toward “home”. The smaller mixed breed (border collie and something) then quietly collects them at “home” and herds them into a tight group to be penned. One of these good sheep dogs sells for about $5000.

The cattle also are not penned and, as picture 6 shows, wander anywhere—even to the beach.

We also sampled wonderful local cheeses and wines. Good day!

That night we crossed the Cook Strait, arriving at Nelson, on the South Island, the next morning. Nelson is a small city (40,000) and the arrival of our ship was big doings!  Not many people drop by Nelson! A picture of our ship was prominently displayed on the daily 16-page newspaper. We ran into some local people, who immediately asked “Are you on that beautiful ship?”  Crowds gathered on the dock for our arrival and departure.

The area is known for its fruit, hops, vineyards and 3 national parks. We visited the Abel Tasman National Park and hiked a couple miles, part of a 5-day hike through the park.  The National Park can only be reached by foot or boat, so we picked up a local boat (wet landings) that toured us through the bays in the park and then dropped us at a site appropriately called Anchorage.

We hiked through lush vegetation, as shown in Picture 7, on a trail that was clay and gravel and STEEP! It would have been nasty in the rain. Our first stop was Pitt Head, where we took pictures 8 and 9. Picture 8 actually shows Anchorage, where we landed, while picture 9 looks north, up the coast, deeper into the park. As you can see, we had a dry, but gloomy day, which was good for hiking, but not so good for pictures.

After much up and down, we arrived at the beach in picture 10 for a picnic lunch, before heading back through the woods to Anchorage.

On to Australia! We’re currently on a 3-day sail across the Tasman Sea, which is notoriously rough. Fortunately, it’s smooth today, but we expect rougher seas tonight.