When we travel to a distant place, viewing native flora and fauna is always a checkbox item. For Australia, we’ve done fairly well for aquatic species – crocs, coral and fish. We even saw a lizard or two. But not so much for land-based animals and birds. I had hopes my rain forest walk the other day would be fruitful, but nothing except a parrot in a tree. There’s only one more land excursion before we leave the ship but that’s going to be in a town – Newcastle – and so a pigeon or two is all we can expect. So today we broke down and went to the zoo.

Actually, when we signed on for this trip, today was supposed to be spent in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. I had looked forward to learning more about the 19^th century history of this town but Viking, in its infinite wisdom, changed the itinerary to anchoring at Mooloolaba. Mooloolaba (kinda fun to say, once you get the hang of it) is another resort town like the others we’ve seen, this one having more sailing yachts per foot of waterfront than any other port we’ve called at. Lots of fishing boats too – shrimp prawn fishing, I’d guess. Frankly, I’ve had enough of these resorts. I’m convinced the Aussies of Queensland are a wealthy lot. Like most such places around the world, there were few empty berths. The yacht owners are all busy earning money to pay for the berthing fees, rather than sailing, I guess.

The trip from the dock to the zoo was only 20 minutes or so over very nice motorways – there’s much to be said for living in places lacking cold weather that make frost heaves and potholes a fact of life. The Australia Zoo was founded by the father and mother of Steve Irwin, the guy known as “The Crocodile Hunter” who had a television series of that name in the 1990s. He’s the one who introduced the word “Crikey,” meaning “oh dear me,” as in “Crikey, that croc took a bite out me mate’s bloomin’ onion,” to mix a metaphor. Steve Irwin died tragically when he was bitten by a stingray in 2006 while filming an underwater documentary in the Great Barrier Reef.

The zoo was quite nice. I particularly liked the reptile and bird displays, Judy perhaps not so much. And of course there were kangaroos and Koala bears to see and even pet. The only thing I missed was seeing the dingoes, the wild dog of Australia. Dingoes are variously listed as a protected species or a pest depending on which governmental agency and area of Australia you might be visiting.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a dingo in the Outback. It would be nice to see a ‘roo in the wild too. We’ll see.

It’s now Sunday, December 3 as I type, an “at sea” day and I must admit I’ve slacked off on my blogging since not every day is an “on” day. The Internet service, provided via Skylink, is very slow and intermittent here. I suspect Elon hasn’t launched enough satellites in the Southern Hemisphere to provide good service. It worked much better up north near the Equator. Judy has two videos on Australia ready to go but cannot upload them.

Tomorrow at Newcastle is our last day on the Orion. They kick us off on Tuesday and we’re off to the Outback. Who knows what Internet service we’ll find there so you may not hear from us for several days. But all should be good in Melbourne and Sydney.

We were scheduled for a repeat snorkeling session just like the one day-before-yesterday. Thankfully, Judy figured out that it would be an exact duplicate, so we switched at the last minute to the Whitsundays Yacht Experience. This tour promised a sailing experience (you know, sails and wind) plus swimming and snorkeling and exploring to see aboriginal cave drawings.

The sailing part worked well. The Lady Enid is a 72-foot two-masted sailing boat capable of handling 24 passengers in comfort. The day turned out to be sunny, warm and windy. Our captain estimated the wind at 20 kts and my guess was we were seeing 3 to 4-foot waves. The motion of the boat was lively and there was a pretty good tilt toward the leeward side of the boat.

All those statistics are important to us since last Spring, when we went yachting with Jeff and Carter in the British Virgin Islands, Jeff, thinking of his dottering old parents, booked a twin-hulled catamaran, rather than a monohull. Not so tippy and not so rocking. We never saw more than 10 Kts of wind so sailing was smooth. Now we’ve got our sea legs and are ready for more next time we go out with Jeff.

The Whitsunday Islands are not well defined but consists of roughly 74 islands in the chain named the Cumberland Islands by Captain James Cook on June 3, 1770. He named the the Whitsunday Passage to honor the day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday. So, we can say that we sailed the same waters that the H.M.B. Endeavor passed through 253 years ago. We were making 9 Kts; Cook averaged 3 Kts. No GPS; no auxiliary engine. What a guy.

We set out from Arlie Beach, a happening resort town. Our Captain has been sailing here for 26 years and virtually everything we saw has been built in that timeframe. The trip to the Nara Inlet on Hook Island took over two hours. The plan was to climb the cliff to see the aboriginal cave drawings, eat lunch, go snorkeling and sail home.

One small hitch: the mainsail wouldn’t come down. It would drop maybe 5 feet and stop. No amount of jiggling of the ropes worked. Finally, the first mate put on a harness and the gal serving lunch cranked him up to the top of the mast – what, maybe 50 or even 75 feet above the deck? He found a bolt that had come loose, blocking the sail and presto, down it came. This whole process took a good half hour.

We took the dingy ashore and climbed up a fairly steep hill to the caves. Judy elected to stay in the shade and avoid the climb, which was probably a good decision. One lady in our group fell in the drink getting out of the zodiac-style dingy, tripped and cut herself coming down the hill (lots of blood but no great damage) and then fell getting into the dingy. I caught her final fall: she landed on top of me and I fell on top of a fortunately smooth and soft rock. No damage done.

A light lunch was served. The captain ordered the sail raised to the point of the previous problem and off we went, presumably to the snorkeling beach. The captain, however, announced that due to the delay, the rough seas and the poor snorkeling conditions that we’d head home instead. Probably a good decision but I was looking forward to another underwater photo session.

Back on board the Orion, we attended a lecture on Sir Joseph Banks and other naturalists who sailed on Cook’s first two voyages. Cook had had enough of scientists and didn’t take any on the third trip. But Banks and the others contributed greatly to scientific knowledge and their findings are main displays in many natural history museums.

I never thought I’d say it, but after three eight-hour days on the tourist trail, snorkeling, hiking the rain forest and yachting, I’m ready for a day at sea. Judy and I had a late breakfast, took our constitutional on the Promenade Deck (now called the Jogging Track, although I’ve yet to see anyone go at more than a brisk walk pace, present typer included).

I’ve been reading The Fatal Shores about British practice of exporting 168,000 criminals to Australia beginning in the 1788 and continuing until the mid 1868. Many were convicted of minor crimes of property theft, driven by poor economic conditions. Brutal, inhumane, slavish and nothing to be proud of. We’re going to a lecture on the subject in a few minutes. There are four lectures scheduled for today, covering the Great Barrier Reef, the Quad consortium (India, Australia, Japan and the US), a port talk covering Mooloolaba, our destination for tomorrow and one on the importance of islands in world history. Mooloolaba was renamed by a real estate developer from the Near North Shore to Mooloolaba. Kinda like the renaming of Ship Pond to Onawa so as to attract more “Sports.”

We’re going to the other fancy restaurant tonight – the Chef’s Table. We did the Italian version a week or so ago.

Jon and I went separate places.  His tour was more demanding than I wanted. 

Jon thought I was going to see a billabong, maybe even get to hold one or feed one or at least take a picture of one. You, unlike Jon, know that a billabong is “a branch of a river forming a backwater or stagnant pool, made by water flowing from the main stream during a flood.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Jon also didn’t know that Billabong is a line of clothing. You know, the kind of stuff you see at the beach, worn by someone whose mother wouldn’t approve.

We started at the top of Castle Hill where we were able to have a 360-degree view of Townsville.  I am putting together videos so look for them when I post the link to the video.  The video will cover several days at a time.

We then went to Billabong Sanctuary.  It is a little zoo where we were able to have up close encounters with several animals.  The first was a small crocodile and yes, I was able to hold it.  At the end of the tour, we saw the full-grown crocodile having a meal of a bird and no, I did not come close to him.  We also saw an Australian python and had the opportunity to hold it, but I ran out of time and only touched it. 

Next, we saw a Wombat that weighed 28 – 29 KG and yes, he is a little overweight.  They like them to be 25 kg.  They like to eat gingkoes. 

Now on to the Koala where we watched him move around the pen area.  Yes, they are very cute.  You just want to hug them. 

After this we were able to get into the pen with a Koala and have our picture taken with him. He was holding tight to the tree and his nose was nestled in the crook of the tree. 

The final event was the crocodile feeding I mentioned before. Along the way I took pictures of various birds and ducks I came upon.  As I walked back, I went into the Kangaroo Corral and saw several.  The cutest one standing did not stay still long enough for me to get my camera open, read the screen in the sun and turn back around.  Oh, where did he go?  He was on the other side back to me. Oh well!

I was very pleased with this tour. They appear to take care of the animals.  They are not using the same animals for the demonstrations.  They rotate them so they are only exposed once or twice a week I think they said. 

 

Today was a divide and conquer day. I went to the rain forest and Judy went to the zoo to see billabongs, whatever they may be. We’ll get her to tell us in a minute. 

My trip started with a drive through Townsville (named after the European guy named Towns who “discovered” the place). It’s not right to judge a town by a tour bus drive through, but the vibe I got was positive. Lots of modern buildings, great roads, a feel of prosperity. We saw a number of parks, especially along the waterfront. There is an ordinance to preserve historically significant buildings although most of the protected buildings are not much more than 100 years old.

What really struck me was none of this was done for the tourist trade. The parks and so on were done for the people who live here. And you should see the rugby stadium! Go Cowboys! Townsville seems to me to be a very livable place.

Economically, it does pretty well. There is an active cane sugar industry. Much of the raw sugar is shipped to South Africa, we’re told. Mining for tin, copper and even gold is strong here. And there’s a good harbor to support it all.

From Townsville we headed up the coastal plain on the motorway for about an hour. This is a fast-growing part of the region with lots of new housing going in. Everyone wants to live on the water, crocodile infested though it may be, I guess. At least Florida alligators confine themselves to golf courses and leave the ocean beaches free for tourists. Again, a prosperous looking neighborhood.

Next, we left the low-lying coastal region and started climbing up into the coastal mountains. Don’t quote me on this, but generally speaking, Queensland can be thought of as a strip of flat land along the ocean, running northwesterly, no more than 50 miles wide. Parallel to the coastal plain is a range of mountains, reaching, I’m guessing, 2,000 to maybe 4,000 feet. Beyond the mountains? Desert for as far as the eye can see. When we go to Alice Springs next week we’ll be on the same desert. If it weren’t for the shoreline, Australia wouldn’t be worth habituating.

What happens is that on-shore breezes rise up the eastern side of the mountains. The uplift wrings the moisture from the clouds in the form of fog and rain. That’s what produces the rain forest in the mountains we visited today. After that, there’s no more moisture, hence desert to the west.

The winding road we traveled up into the forest was built for the harvest of tall trees back 100 years or more ago. Later, it served as a path for telegraph and then telephone and power lines. All along the road one sees palm trees, mangos and other fruit trees that normally wouldn’t grow here. The story is that the workers, Asian, mainly, threw their seeded lunch leftovers into the brush, creating the anomaly we see today.

The rain forest, or is it really a cloud forest? is heavily wooded, of course. We saw no wildlife, only trees on our walk and I’ll let the pictures show you what I saw. Believe it or not, it actually started to sprinkle while we walked, so maybe it was a rain forest after all.

One interesting tree, or maybe it’s a vine, is the strangling fig. It winds itself around the host tree, limiting growth of other plants around it and eventually killing the host. We actually saw the same vine in Sarasota, Florida while dining at a stone crab food truck joint.

Lunch was at a resort run by a family who lives there and puts on tours like ours. This is the beginning of their season and cruise boats are a big part of their business. Last season they hosted 1,000 students from the U.S. They loved the wilds after, that is, they recovered from lack of connectivity.

We’re back on board, doing our blogging.But the Internet service is slooooow and unreliable. Here posting will have to wait until later. Patience, please!

 

I hate it when people ask me, “What was the highlight of our trip?” For me, it’s the totality of the trip, not one incident or even day that makes a trip memorable. But there’s no denying that snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef would be pretty high on my bucket list if I had one. And unlike Bali, which for me didn’t live up to its billing, the GBR came through with flying colors. 

We mustered to go ashore at 9:15, bussed to the GBR charter dock and all 250 of us were on board before 10 for the hour-and-a-half ride to a floating pontoon anchored over the tour company’s assigned section of the reef. As our bus driver predicted, winds were light and the seas calm with only a slight swell. 

The pontoon is a huge platform supporting both scuba diving and snorkeling. It can hold in excess of 300 guests. They also operate a “semisubmersible” a tin-can looking craft that seats 26 in its oversized keel beneath the water. We took the 30-minute cruise and saw similar fish and coral as we did snorkeling. Lunch was served. It’s quite an operation, especially considering the 250 passengers today average at least 70 years of age. 

The big deal, of course, was the hour we spent snorkeling. We’d done snorkeling with Jeff and Carter in the BVIs last Spring and in Hawaii with Esme in Hawaii last Summer. So, we knew what to expect and, as I said, the GBR was the equal of the other two. See the pictures – mostly coral scenes – to get a sense of what it was like. 

Rather than take a bus back to our ship, we walked along Cairns’ very nice waterfront. It was a long walk since we had to pass the length of a P&O cruise ship, a real boat, complete with a water slide and an uncountable number of decks. Different market segment, for sure. Not many Orion passengers would make it down a waterslide, although a surprising number of, shall we say, questionable oldsters did just fine snorkeling. I shouldn’t be so quick to judge the old people with whom we are traveling.

Tomorrow: Townsville and a look at the other Queensland tourist attraction, the rain forest. No more snorkeling until day after tomorrow.

By the way, for those keeping score at home, we’ve now been on the road for 15 days, with 15 more to go. Half way!

Judy has been shooting video on her iPhone and has a movie covering our time in Indonesia. Here’s the link: https://judyrick.zenfolio.com/p618424729/ec30e6d5c

Check it out. It’s sure to relieve the boredom you’re suffering from all my still shots. She’s putting together a movie of the video I shot underwater today. We’ll put that up soon.