Noon Report:

• Location: S 43° 55.20′, E 152° 41.83′
• Speed: 14.4 knots
• Course: 276º
• Weather: Overcast
• Wind: NE 12 knots
• Air Temp: 60º

This is the 4th day of a 4 day crossing from Wellington, NZ to Hobart, Tasmania (counting the ‘scenic sailing’ day as a sea day since we didn’t set foot on dry land). It’s the last multi-day run of sea days for a couple of weeks – meaning that we will be pretty busy for a while.

Today the sea is a bit calmer. There are the traditional swells but they aren’t big rolling spraying things that sound with the occasional Boom while we’re in the Theatre (Deck 2 forward).

We celebrated the more peaceful conditions by taking breakfast up at Mamsen’s – World’s Best Waffles, and a Raisin bun. Not seeing the need to be anywhere else…

…we stayed and read in the peaceful setting until it was time to head down for the first lecture:

This lecture covered the 19th century (Settlement, Class issues, Missionaries, Gold Miners, Early Urbanization), 20th century (Australia on the world stage), 21st century (Pacific Rim trade, Diplomacy, commonwealth membership)

A couple of comments about the seal of Australia depicted here. They take pride in the fact that neither of the animals displayed can move backwards. This symbolizes the national direction to always move forward. And, as our lecturer pointed out, It’s the only national symbol where you can EAT the animals displayed on it.

We stayed put during the break because the next lecture was incredibly popular and we wanted to have seats.

The story of Ned Kelly is a great tale of class struggle (arrived as convicts/arrived as settlers), nationality conflict (English/Irish), the role of money and power. Much of the story is open to interpretation and depending on which point of view you take, you come up with a totally different conclusion. Our 9:30 lecturer mentioned that for many years children (mainly boys) in Australia liked to play wearing a bucket helmet just like Ned wore.

Then it was back to the stateroom to capture the noon position map before heading out to lunch. It was Polynesian Day and Cheryl scored a coconut.

The cafe was way too busy today so we found ourselves at the pool grill enjoying the decadence of a burger, coleslaw, and onion rings.

Then it was back to the room to post yesterday, get started on today, nap, and read until:

4:30 – Port talk today was for our visit to Philip Island on Sunday to watch the Blue Penguin’s parade. This shore excursion is unique in that we dock about 5:00 pm and there is only this 1 excursion out to the site before we arrive back on ship shortly after midnight.

One of the big draws for this port is that the large group of very small penguins (aka Fairy Penguins or Blue Penguins) arrives back on the beach each evening shortly before sunset following a day out fishing in the oceab. This is a major tourist attraction and we’re there just to see that event. All of us. And it’s a tender port. So we have to move upwards of (probably) 700 people into tenders, to the port, out of tenders and onto busses, and down the road to the site. Then we have to do it all in reverse, in the dark. We’ll see how this all works out.

We skipped the 6:30 lecture. It was about how lecture astronaut was selected and trained. Instead we had an early dinner and were early into the Explorer’s lounge to stake out chairs for our BBB team.

BBB was particularly brutal today. We scored 11/23 and still came in 3rd.

One of the advantages of traveling westward is that you get the great sunsets from the Explorer’s. Sorry, I just had to include this one.

The show this evening was a “Getting to Know Us” event with the vocal quartet. We decided to check it out. They talked about their backgrounds (they are all from England), training, auditioning and selection process, impressions of working on the ship, stuff like that. They also sang. Each performed a solo and there were two group numbers – beautiful voices, loved the four part harmony numbers. It was pretty impressive.

That brought us back to our stateroom by 10:00 so it was a quick to bed. Tomorrow is our first Australian port so we (every guest on the ship) have to do a personal passport check before our 8:30 excursion. It’ll be a busy morning.

Cheryl’s factoids on Australia/Tasmania:

• 65,000 BC – about 190 tribal groups trickled over from Asia to spread out all over Australia and even down to the bottom of Tasmania (which in the ice age was still attached to the Australian mainland).
• 1642 – Able Tasman explored (various Dutch ships got blown off their course to the Dutch East Indies so this was originally called Van Dieman’s land)
• 1768 – James Cook explored
• Then various British penal colonies, missionaries, gold rush
• Australia/Tasmania have 250 species of marsupials (mammals with live births but then the tiny fetus who crawl up the outside of the stomach and attach themselves to a nipple in a pouch) and 2 species of monotremes (the platypus and the echidna – who lay a soft egg which they fold a flap of stomach skin over the egg until it hatches and then secrete milk from pores on their belly)
• New Zealand was always separate from Australia and only has one mammal – the bat.
• Australia/ Tasmania will probably go for total independence from Great Britain now that Queen Elizabeth is dead – they have held back because of their great respect for the queen.

Time for me to hit the hay. Till tomorrow.

(But before you go…There are a couple of people reading this who are getting ready for a future world cruise. There’s lots of information out there about what to bring to make life easier in a stateroom and as we prepared for this trip we watched a lot of YouTube and read a lot of blogs and included many of the suggested items in our preparations. However, now that we’ve been living in this space for the better part of 2 months there are a few items that don’t normally get mentioned that we’re glad we have (or wish we had). So for the next few days I’ll add a “Pro Tip” to the end of the post. Please feel free to read, or not, as you are moved. Cheers, R)

Pro Tip: Heavy Duty Magnets and a bit of string (surveyor’s string works best). Heavy duty magnets are great for hanging hats and coats (they don’t fall down the wall quite so easily), and with a bit of string one will hold the door open (so you can hear announcements in case your Captain doesn’t broadcast them into the staterooms).