Blue Book of Boats

The ship sails up the Brisbane River to the heart of the city. The last time I was here, in 1988, it struck me as a pretty but sleepy place with a lot of lovely Victorian era cottages. There has been simply tremendous development since then and Brisbane is now a vast modern metropolis. It has many tall buildings, parks and gardens, sophisticated culture, shopping malls and freeways. It looks affluent in an upper middle class way. I didn’t see any slums or signs of poverty, but not much sign of really high end wealth either. There are far fewer expensive cars like BMW and Mercedes than we see at home, and I saw only one Bentley.

We were picked up at the ship by a friend of Peggy and Mary, Aussie Dave, who they met on their Antarctic cruise. He is a tall, jovial guy with a bald head and a ready smile. He picks us up in a 1964 Holden Estate. It has about a million miles on it, but it is his daily driver.Later he tells me it has been restored twice, but it looks pretty original to me. Rough. It has 4X100 air conditioning. Roll down all four windows and drive 100 kmh. It works. Except the car is so old the speedo reads in miles.

I like Cairns a lot. It is a shame we have only one day here,and my Great Barrier Reef snorkel tour uses up all of it.

But I may not ever come back here, and this is one of the things on my “bucket list” so no way will miss it.

We meet in the Queen’s lounger at 8:50 AM. I arrive on time, as is my habit, but there is a long line of people waiting to get in and it is almost 9 when I get in a can hear the announcement, which is “Get in line for the tour boat”. Table 29 is there except for David. He and I had planned to go together, but he has already gone ahead and we end up on separate boats. I thought all the boats would be going to the same place, but in fact that is not the case. Although the boat says “Green Island Transfer” on it, we don’t go to Green Island at all, but to a pontoon or floating platform anchored over a part of the reef. The other boat is within sight, but at a different pontoon, so David and I have similar days, but not together.

The boat we go out on is about 50′ power catamaran, and it travels at about 25 knots, and the engines don’t seem to be working hard at that so I suppose it can do much more. The brochure warns of possible rough seas but today is smooth, and we have an easy 90 minute cruise to the reef. The cabin is air-conditioned, actually on the cold side.

When we get to the pontoon, it is a good size, about 100 x 40 feet, with a generator room, galley, and showers. There are no toilets, but there are 4 on the boat, with holding tanks. They provide snorkel gear of excellent quality. They offer a beginner’s scuba lesson for $136, but I didn’t bring that much money, so I just snorkel. Just snorkel! This is the finest snorkel experience of my life.

I take my time getting ready, but I’m still in the water long before anyone else and for at least 10 minutes I have the roped off snorkel area to myself. Close to the pontoon all I see is branch coral, quite deep below me, and no fish. Disappointing but I keep swimming. The water shoals and a school of tiny bright blue fish swim by. Then the reef comes up to meet me and there are all kinds of coral, anemones, sea cucumbers and fish.

I particularly like the butterfly fish, who mate for life, and the pair move in unison, 2 inches apart, and neither ever gets much in front or behind. Apparently they can be together 30 years, just like Shirley and I. I only see one pair, and follow them for a while. I didn’t get a good picture. Although the Olympus 850 camera works well underwater, the LCD screen is very hard to see, so my aim is very approximate.

On the way out they warned us not to touch the coral, step on it or damage it. So naturally I’m annoyed when I catch this parrot fish in the act of biting off a piece. Who gave him permission?

There are lots more fish and one green turtle. I took over 100 pictures. I’ll be putting together a slide show later.

This is the sign on the upper deck of the pontoon. They served us a good lunch, but I’m the water as much as time allows, about and hour and a half. The temperature is 26 degrees, 79 Fahrenheit, or the same as the water at Jedediah Island last summer. Visibility about 30 feet. It doesn’t feel very warm, and the air temperature is about the same.

Returning to the ship, I’m feeling too lazy to even serve myself supper, so I change my clothes and dine in the formal dining room and let them serve me. We are underway for Brisbane now.

We enjoyed a lovely sail into Cairns harbor, with many boats, both sail and power around us. Large power cats are popular but I think most are not yacht,but tour boats.

As we come in to dock we pass many yachts at anchor, then still more on moorings and finally what looks like a marina with no floats,boats just tied to pilings bow and stern. I went to the starboard side of the ship and was surprised to see we are right alongside our dock, which is in the center of town.

Cairns is a lovely resort city,fairly small. There is a big convention center that looks like a flattened and curved concertina. One lady asked if it was the opera house. Sorry lady, wrong city!

The ship has a big “Aussie Barbie” going with suckling pigs, whole chickens on beer cans, and shrimp the size of lobster. The line up is long and the smoke thick. I have one beer with our “group” but I don’t eat. I head off the ship to see that town at about 6 PM. It is still light.

Coming off the ship, I turn right and start to walk along a wide sea wall which I can see extends a long way, curving off to the left. I can hear jumbled music in the distance, as if coming from several places.

“Excuse me.” I hear a voice from behind me. Two Australian women, are strolling behind me. “Are you off the ship?”

They question me about where the ship is from and I describe the voyage briefly.

I ask them where I can find a seedy bar for a drink and a snack, and they hold a brief discussion about which is the seediest place. The description sound I bit rough.

“Maybe not too seedy. I don’t want to get killed!”

They laugh and one says “Oh, that never happens. Well, no more than once a week or so.”

They walked with me to the Esplanade area where the restaurants, night market,and bars are. Along the way we passed one tree that is absolutely crammed with cheeping birds, green parrots. There are lots of trees, but it seems every parrot in Cairns lives in this one. It is dusk now and I spot a few bats flitting around. Big ones!

The Cairns waterfront is lively, and we come to a nice looking beach. I remark that it is lovely to have a swimming beach right in the middle of town.

“I don’t think you should swim there! Crocs!” and sure enough I spot what could be the snout of a crocodile just protruding out of the water. Behind the beach is a large salt water swimming pool. No crocs allowed.

I offer to buy them a drink. They exchange wary glances then agree. We sit in an open bar/pizza joint and have a drink, then share a pizza. We chat for an hour while we eat. Very good thin crust Pizza. One of the women is a sailing enthusiast, and she is excited to find that I have met Peter Blake, who is her hero. She’s a nurse from New Zealand. I can’t tell her much about him since I met him in San Diego at one of Bill Koch’s huge parties, and it was no more than a handshake and a brief chat.

When I try to get the bill, I find out one of the women has already paid it! I try and reimburse her, but she is having none of it. Aussie hospitality is amazing. They walked me most of the way back to the ship, taking me through the huge Night Market on the way. Most of the merchants are Chinese, and they sell everything from stuffed crocodiles to didgeridoos to boomerangs, as well as the usual junk. There are many massage booth, $15 for 40 minutes the signs say. They are busy. Tables are right in plain view, they have a sort of flimsy half curtain on a few of them. The masseurs are very young Asian men, and they don’t look to expert to me. What do you expect for $15?

I thank the ladies for their hospitality and we break off. I haven’t spent a single penny of my Aussie money. I’m back on board in time for the “Australian Cultural Show” which is five painted aborigines. The first five minutes is didgeridoo music, which starts out sounding like a badly tuned short wave radio (remember those? Anyone?). Then it expands into an amazing and haunting array of sounds.I liked that part but the rest is the standard “embarrass the tourist” stuff as they drag a couple of hapless men up on stage and try to get them to play the didgeridoo. They can only make farting sounds.

More later, I’m off to the Great Barrier Reef.