No Worries...

March 16
We are on the eastern shore of Australia, headed for Cairns—the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. The seas have calmed considerably (and we’re getting our sea legs so I’ve stopped popping ginger pills like M & M’s) and it’s a beautiful night out on the balcony. It’s hard to believe that the stars we are seeing are not the same stars that we have back home. Here we see the Southern Cross rather than the Big Dipper (although to be truthful, they all look pretty much the same to me.) We went to a lecture this afternoon about the much-maligned Captain Bligh—the “chap” who was set out to sea in a tiny open boat with eighteen other officers and loyal crew members of the HMAV (not to be confused with an HMS—which is a true warship) Bounty and left to die somewhere off the shores of Tahiti by a mutinous crew that wanted to stay in Tahiti rather than return to England (I can’t really fault them for wanting that, but their methods were a bit over-the-top). Anyway, Bligh and his boys made it back to England—over 3500 sea miles without charts or sufficient food and water! Unbelievable. What’s really unbelievable is Bligh continued his naval career and even later served as Governor of Australia for a short while.

On Wednesday, (March 17) we entered the passage between Australia and the Whitsunday Islands. This is great for us because the islands are on the starboard (right) side of the ship and our cabin is on the starboard side so we get to see them as we glide by. The sea is absolutely calm and topaz blue, which is also great since we’ve had whitecaps and rolling seas for most of the last two days. Every day it gets warmer and warmer (wonderful!) and with the gorgeous blue water, calm seas and little bumps of islands stringing along the horizon it reminds me of the stretch from St. Thomas to the British Virgin Islands. Only eight of the Whitsundays are inhabited, but we think that’s because these islands are within the protected area of the Great Barrier Reef and probably development is prohibited to protect the reef. Only one more day at sea until we enter the port at Cairns.

March 18
We came into our first port today since Sydney. It is the town of Cairns (which the locals pronounce “Cans”) and it’s a very pretty, low-rise city of 50,000 people at the tip of NE Queensland. We were scheduled to go out to the Great Barrier Reef by catamaran, but alas, a cyclone has come in just south of here and the boats aren’t making the trip due to high winds and choppy seas. As the Aussies say, “no worries.” We instead took the Sky Rail (or Sky Rye-all) up to the ancient rainforest into the Aboriginal village of Kuranda. The Sky Rail is amazing. I had to really suck it up and not let on that the heights made my feet sweat—we were upwards of 350 ft in thin air swinging from a little gondola (it held six people) and zipping over the jungle canopy on a single cable. This rainforest was here when dinosaurs roamed the earth and when Australia was still connected to Antarctica and South America (in other words, a long time ago). We took the railroad back. What a contrast! The narrow-gauge railroad was built in the late 1800’s and it clattered and squealed down the mountains like it was hoping this was its last trip. But the views were spectacular—waterfalls, the reef out in the distance, and miles and miles (or as they say here—hectares and hectares) of sugar cane fields. We made it back to the ship just before the bad weather set in. We’re prepared for a rocky night at sea.

The pictures I’ve posted are of Tom in the Sky Rail gondola; a basket fern high in a tree in the rainforest; and a life-size model of a cassowary bird—which is vital to the survival of the forest.