Cruisin'

We are back home after our 10 day cruise to Cairns via Brisbane and back with stops (is that the nautically correct term?) at Townsville and Airlie Beach. The ship was P & O's Pacific Sun with an incredible 2,000 or so passengers and some 500 crew on board.
We set sail from Newcastle's lovely harbour late in the afternoon and steamed into Brisbane a day and a half later.

Here is the ship (taken from the ferry we caught into Brisbane).
From there we sailed to Cairns via Willis Island (never heard of it - neither had we before we booked). Willis Island is a speck in the ocean, 500 metres by 150 meters it boasts a weather station and not much else. Its main claim to fame is that it lies some 450 km or 280 miles off shore and so by travelling to the east of it we were able apparently to enjoy duty free purchases on board.
We had been promised a radio chat with the people who make up the crew of observers but we passed by on the Saturday of the AFL replay. The chat never eventuated and its absence passed without comment, it can only be that they had some far more pressing matters on their minds - meteorological ones, no doubt.
We had 2 stewards looking after our cabin, one from India the other from the Philippines and while I am sure we did not get any special treatment our cabin was made up each morning and each afternoon after Judy's obligatory rest. In addition, our cabin hosted the "animals" below. How they found the time to do that as well in the 7 am to 10 pm shift and still smile when they saw us (well saw me anyway) I do not know.


We found it something of a struggle to work up even a modest hunger but did our best by reading as energetically as we could between meals.
In Cairns we took a tour to the tropical rainforest which began in a small nature reserve with kinds of animals tourists want to see.


Moved on to a performance of traditional Aboriginal dance and spear and boomerang throwing demonstrations, a ride in an army duck and then importantly, the buffet barbeque.
This was just the overture, then came the real reason we had chosen the tour - the 7.5 km cable car ride over the rain forest canopy, it was incredible.

The cable car makes two stops with short walks available. The first allows views of a dam and falls used for power generation (the dam not the falls).


The rainforest is an amazing place, had a type of tree fern I had not seen before, amazing epiphytic ferns high in the canopy and dozens of other plants struggling for space and light, it is staggeringly lush.

From Cairns we sailed to Townsville where we disembarked and niavely decided to walk into town. From the ship I could see the ferry which runs to Magnetic Island and thought a trip across might be nice. The wharf was a few hundred metres from us - more or less across a short stretch of water over which there was no convenient crossing. We walked and walked but it proved to be far too hot and far too far, so after a short time out and about we made our way back on board and did some more reading.
The next day we were anchored at Airlie Beach and where we had booked a day on the outer reef. Outer is no exaggeration, we took a catamaran (there were 314 people on board - after the trips that have left people behind they had two people count us on board initially and then back on board) to a platform tethered 95 km off shore where we rode in a glass bottom boat, a semi-submersible, snorkeled and ate again. I also had the chance to scuba drive which I have always wanted to do. It was a very busy day, the trip to the platform took two and a quarter hours each way.

There is a small crew who live for some weeks at a time on the pontoon (interesting they said, when a cyclone hits). This was taken from the glass bottomed boat and shows our catamaran moored alongside the pontoon.

On this trip we saw flying fish and a whale and from the deck of the ship we saw whales on 3 different occasions but unfortunately missed seeing two sunfish on one morning apparently.
Our bed at home is more comfortable but I do miss being rocked to sleep. We have lost our sea legs and today (Monday), Judy leapt out of bed overjoyed by the thought of going back to school!