Albany, Australia
After two fairly rough days at sea crossing the Australian bight we reached Albany on the morning of February 20.
Founded in 1826 by a group sent out from Sydney, Albany was a home to whalers until 1978 & was an important stop on the shipping route from Britain to Sydney. Until 1897 it was the only deep water port in Western Australia. Situated on Princess Royal Harbor inside the much larger King George Sound, Its population is about 34,000.
The coast in this region can be quite dramatic & our excursion set out early in the morning to see some of it. We visited Torndirrup National Park to see two formations in the coastal rocks that are within walking distance of each other. The first is called “The Gap,” an inlet into the rocky shore where the tides rush in. A walkway has been built part of the way over the gap to give a better view.
Not far away is the Natural Bridge. You can walk near, but not over, the Bridge.
This rocky and inhospitable area had quite a few flowers & also some unusual plants whose trunks stretched far over the rocks, looking dead but supporting greenery at the end.
Driving back from the National Park we passed a field with a horse feeding while wild kangaroos breakfasted in the field behind him.
We returned to Albany & drove up Mt Clarence. Near the top is a monument to the ANZAC troops who fought in Palestine during World War I (ANZAC is an acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corp). This monument was originally erected in Port Said, Egypt, in 1932 but was destroyed during the Suez crisis in 1956. The base & plinth were sent back to Australia but the sculpture had been irreparably destroyed. A new version of the monument was created and the whole thing was erected here in 1964. The sculpture shows a mounted Australian and a dismounted New Zealand soldier in action.
Albany is a center for ANZAC remembrance because it was from this harbor that the more than 40,000 ANZAC volunteers set sail in two convoys to fight in World War I. The first convoy left on November 1, 1914. Many of those troops fought in the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey, an unsuccessful amphibious campaign designed to take Turkey out of the war early. One of the famous battles there was for “One Pine Hill,” so named because a single pine tree was at the top. Near the monument here is the Lone Pine memorial, consisting of a pine tree planted in 1974 from a pine cone collected by some soldiers from the top of One Pine Hill, after the original pine tree had been destroyed in the battle.
At the top of the mountain above these memorials is the Mt Clarence Lookout, with fabulous views over Albany and King George Sound. Ships have to come through the narrow passage in the foreground to enter Princess Royal Harbor and the Albany dock. This passage is called Ataturk Entrance, apparently named after Kemal Ataturk, the first president of modern Turkey and also a general who fought against the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli.
Next we toured the nearby National Anzac Centre, a museum dedicated to the ANZAC troops of World War I. It was very interesting with cutting edge interactive technology, although a little light on artifacts. The focus was on individuals who were part of the Anzac force. Each visitor receives a card describing one Anzac member, then you can follow their personal experiences as you proceed through the museum, reading about the battles & the people who fought in them. The museum opened on November 1, 2014, the 100th anniversary of the departure of the first convoy of troops. It is very evocative.
We drove back into town & the bus dropped us off on York Street, the main street in town. Albany has no stoplights, only roundabouts at the intersections. We walked up the street, lined with old Victorian buildings. Among other things, we passed the Town Hall, erected in 1888, which was also the place to catch the shuttle back to the ship. There was also an interesting statue of Mokare, an elder of the Noongar Aboriginal people who was instrumental in establishing good relations with the British settlers in 1826. Monuments to Aboriginal people seem to be pretty rare in our limited experience. A plaque explained that this was a “reconciliation project.” Near the Town Hall was a large poster depicting the head of this statue.
We stopped for lunch at the Albany Hotel, built in 1835. Among the best fish & chips we have ever had, along with some tasty local brew.
The public library was under renovation so it didn’t look like much from the outside. But it was still in operation inside, although a two week closure was imminent.
We saw more flora after our return from the National Park in the morning. So here is what some of it looked like.
Last but not least we walked up to visit the Dog Rock. It looks very much like a dog’s head, especially since someone has painted a collar around the dog’s neck. We have read that the Noongar Aborginal people called this “Boondie Yokine” before the Europeans came, which translates as “Dog Rock.”
Back on the ship, we had nice views of the port and of the wind farm on the opposite side of the harbor. Some 18 huge windmills sit atop a ridge. We were told that there are only 7 days a year when there is insufficient wind to turn the turbines (the day we were there was certainly not one of them) and that the wind farm supplies about 80% of all the local electricity. Solar panels provide most of the rest.
We pulled away from the dock and headed out through Ataturk Entrance. On the island to our right was a flock of Cormorants.
A lot of locals had parked their cars on the mountain beside Albany to watch us sail out.
As evening fell we sailed out into King George Sound and thence into the Southern Ocean.
Adelaide, Australia
We spent February 17 in Adelaide, having docked during the night after the very short sail from Penneshaw (less than 10 miles). Adelaide was first settled by Europeans in 1836, displacing the Aboriginal Kaurna people whose culture was destroyed within a couple of decades. It was named for Queen Adelaide of England, the wife of William IV. It is the only state capital in Australia that was settled and built by free settlers rather than convicts, and it has been known from the beginning as a pioneer in civil and religious liberty. Adelaide is a sizable city, with a population in excess of 1.3 million.
The port is a good way from the city, so we had to take a train into town. The train runs between the port and the city center and it was $10 for an all day pass (but really, it was only useful for two trips: into and out of town). At the railway station we met our friends Robert & Bill, with whom we spent the day. Leaving the downtown train station we walked down the street past a number of sculptures & monuments, most notably the War Memorial.
We visited the State Library, which had a gorgeous old part & a snazzy new one full of glass. We were puzzled by all the old books in the original library, which didn’t seem to have any clear scheme for organizing all of its old books. Rick suggested maybe it was in order of acquisition, which would be particularly useless. In front of the library was a statue of Robert Burns, who seems to have been very popular in the Antipodes.
We spent some time in the South Australia Museum, which includes the largest collection of Aboriginal artifacts in the world & a very extensive natural history exhibit.
We walked down the part of Rundle Street that is a pedestrian mall. It is lined with shops & large stores and has street performers and sculptures, including one called Silver Balls. We also saw signs for the Adelaide Fringe Festival, a three week arts festival that was in progress. In one of the large stores we found the Adelaide City Library, but it was on the top floor and the escalators didn’t go that high. Puzzled, we walked around and found the entrance in what looked like an alley behind the store.
The city library was very nice inside, with a board game area & all the modern conveniences, including a usb charging station.
After this it was time to eat. But that wasn’t so easy. It was Saturday and a lot of stores & restaurants were closed, though we aren’t sure why. Anyway we did a LOT of walking looking for a pub & eventually settled for what turned out to be a very good pizza restaurant. It was the first pizza with pumpkin we have had & it turned out to be surprisingly good. We then walked a long way to a couple of stores we had read about, but they were closed. So we walked all the way across town to some other stores, which were very expensive and a bit disappointing.
We were all tired by this time so we headed back to the ship, where we heard that a passenger had been removed by police in handcuffs. We don’t know why, but suspect it was drugs. Anyway, that’s it for Adelaide, a pleasant but unspectacular city based on our short experience.
Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island (Australia)
After two sea days we finally anchored off Penneshaw shortly before noon on February 16. You may recall from the last episode that we left Hobart on the evening of February 13 with the plan of avoiding the worst of the storm by sailing back up the east coast of Tasmania then west along the south coast of Australia to Kangaroo Island, located just 6 miles from the Australian coast. Well, we took that route but we certainly didn’t avoid the storm. In fact, as we turned the corner from north to west at the top of Tasmania we hit winds so hard that the ship tipped to starboard and some deck chairs tried to blow away from the aft pool into the sea (photos excerpted from someone’s phone video).
The Captain reported wind gusts up to 100 mph (well into hurricane territory, although its called a cyclone in Asia) and swells up to 26 feet. Mary saw a wave hit the windows on deck 5. We were rocking so badly it was very difficult to walk inside the ship.
The Valentine’s Ball was cancelled and the gala night dress code was dropped, primarily so women wouldn’t feel the need to wear high heels (surprisingly to us, a majority of folks seemed to be wearing formal clothes anyway). We have seen some rough seas in our time, but this was probably the worst. So little progress was being made sailing into the wind through these high swells that the Captain “hove to,” slowing the engines down to a crawl through the night. The doors to the outside decks were sealed, so the only pictures we could get of the rough seas were through dirty and water streaked windows. They don’t really convey how nasty the ocean looked or how high the waves & swells were, but they will give some idea.
Here is a picture sequence excerpted from someone’s smartphone video that will give you a real idea of the severity of this storm. These pictures were taken through the window of the Crow’s Nest, we were told, on the top floor of the ship 8 or 10 decks high, showing a wave that actually hit that window!
Kangaroo Island is a tender port & it sure looked like we would be unable to tender ashore in this kind of sea. But when we arrived, shortly before noon, the seas were calm. As the Captain noted, it was like waking up on a different planet.
Kangaroo Island is Australia’s third largest island (after Tasmania & Melville’s Island) at 96 miles long and 34 miles wide. Aboriginal people lived here at least 16,000 years ago but had abandoned it by 2,000 years ago after the water rose and it became an island. Matthew Flinders was the first European to land here in 1802 & named it after the animals that were the main course at a feast. Settlement began in 1836 and today there are some 4500 people living on the island, 300 of whom live in Penneshaw, the island’s second largest town & best port.
We were scheduled for a 9 hour bus tour that would have enabled us to see all the best natural sights on the island, most of which are far from Penneshaw. Unfortunately, because of the storm we arrived about 4 hours later than scheduled and all the long excursions that would have taken more than about 4 hours were cancelled. So we tendered ashore around 1:30 (because the tendering was slowed by some difficult swells that made boarding difficult) & just walked into town.
As we approached the ferry dock we saw a number of birds we think were Cormorants relaxing on the edge of the sea wall.
Walking up toward the town we passed Hog Bay, a white sand swimming beach. A colony of small penguins lives on the hill above the beach, but they are only there at night. We stopped at a market with stalls set up in an open field called the Oval, where local produce and crafts were offered for sale (apparently this market is set up whenever a cruise ship is in port). There were some nice flowers and also some birds that might be New Holland Honeyeaters.
We continued through the tiny town to Christmas Cove, which we understand is where the first settlers of the town landed. There was a black swan in the cove.
We visited the Visitor’s Center, which included a small museum. There we got directions to the library, an annex to the library of Kingscote, the largest town on the island about a 45 minute drive away. Unfortunately it turned out that the Penneshaw branch of the library was inside the local elementary school. School was in session, so we didn’t try to go inside.
Since we made it onto the island late it was already nearing the time we had to be back on board. We had, in any event, pretty much made it all the way to the other side of town. So we walked back, hoping in vain to find a place to eat. The most famous fish & chips establishment, called Fish, was closed for renovations. We did stop in the grocery store & buy some local honey, produced by the only pure strain of Ligurian bees in the world. On the way back to the pier we passed some interesting metal sculptures outside a hotel and some more nice flowers.
So our stop in Kangaroo Island wasn’t really all that we had hoped, but we were happy that we had been able to visit here at all after such a memorable and difficult voyage from Tasmania.
Hobart, Tasmania (Australia)
After a day at sea Rick was much revived by the time we reached Hobart on the morning of February 13. There was some rough weather during the sea day but it was bright & sunny when we left the ship in Hobart.
We spent the day walking around the center city outside the port. Founded in 1804 mostly as a penal colony, Hobart is the second oldest city in Australia after Sydney. Its population is just over 220,000. It is a gateway to Antarctica and closer to the Antarctic coast than to Perth, Australia. It had a thriving whaling industry for many years. Aboriginal people had lived in Tasmania for at least 35,000 years before the coming of the British, but no pure Aboriginal people are left here after many years of violence & diseases brought by the settlers.
We walked out along Hunter Street, a row of very old warehouses now converted partly to shops.
Our first stop was the Tasmanian Museum, where we spent some time learning about the local fauna & the history of the settlers’ relations with them (not good until recently). There were a lot of stuffed specimens. Notably a wombat standing on its hind legs is a copy of one sent to England in the 19th century. It seems that the taxidermist had never seen a wombat & decided that the very hard & thick skin on its rump came from rearing back on its hind legs. In fact, wombats move on four feet and never rear up on two feet; the extra hard skin in that area is a defense mechanism, which they turn toward the opening in their ground holes when predators are near. Similarly the ferocious appearance of a Tasmanian Devil with its mouth open was long thought to be an aggressive gesture, but it is actually more like a huge yawn.
We walked past the Maritime Museum, housed in what used to be the Tasmanian Public Library. Built in 1904, a plaque outside says it was contributed by Andrew Carnegie. We hadn’t known before that Carnegie built libraries outside of North America.
We walked up to find the Hobart Synagogue. Built in 1845, it is the oldest synagogue in Australia. In the back are hard benches where the Jewish convicts were marched in for services. It is one of only a handful of synagogues in the world built in the Egyptian Revival style, with lotus topped columns & trapezoidal windows. It is quite small but pretty interesting.
The current library isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the old one was. It is a steel & glass box, looking like something from the 1970’s or 80’s. The inside is all modern as well.
We also stopped by St David’s Cathedral. We think it is Anglican.
We visited Salamanca Square, an area of old dockside warehouses that has been transformed into trendy restaurants & shops. We walked across the Parliament Gardens outside the Tasmanian Parliament building and on to the Post Office, where we bought stamps & mailed some postcards. We passed a pub where we didn’t eat lunch but enjoyed the signs.
Well, that was enough for one day so we headed back to the harbor for a late lunch. We had delicious fish & chips in a place called Mures, a restaurant on the waterfront owned by a family that catches, processes & prepares the fish itself. As we walked back to the ship we passed some waterside sculptures of penguins, a seal & a sea lion.
We were originally scheduled to leave Hobart in the wee hours of the morning for a short jaunt to Port Arthur, our next scheduled port. But the day before we arrived the Captain announced that a nasty storm was heading for the west coast of Tasmania, so to avoid it we would all have to be aboard by 8:00 for a 9 PM departure back up the east coast, skipping Port Arthur. This was a disappointment since we were looking forward to seeing the remains of the famous convict prison at Port Arthur, but safety first. In the late afternoon, however, it was beautiful in Hobart and hard to believe such bad weather was imminent as we gazed around the sunny harbor.
We were scheduled on an after-sundown excursion to Bonorong Wildlife Park that wasn’t due back until 10:00. It was to be a nocturnal visit after the park was closed that would enable us to see these mostly nocturnal animals up and about, rather than asleep as they usually are during the day. We were notified that the trip would still be run, but moved up an hour so that we could be back by 9:00 when the Captain wanted to sail. This was good news, but it meant that we would be leaving the park around sundown, so the visit wouldn’t actually be nocturnal. As it turned out, that really didn’t matter.
It was a fairly long drive to Bonorong. This looks a lot like a zoo, with different animals in their own fenced off areas. But in fact it is a sanctuary, where injured or endangered animals are brought for help. For example, it is not unusual for a kangaroo to be hit by a car and sometimes a joey will be discovered in the dead kangaroo’s pouch. The joey can be brought here to be nurtured in safety. Their goal is to nurture the animals to a point where they can be released in the wild, although some will never reach that point. The animals are not sold to zoos.
As noted, it was after hours so only our group was there (2 buses worth) & we were shown around by very knowledgeable park attendants who are very committed to their mission. We started with the kangaroos, which were in a fairly large open area that allowed them to run (jump) around. We were each given a bag of kangaroo food to use to introduce ourselves to the friendly kangaroos. As we left the kangaroos we were told to dump the remaining food on the ground, where the kangaroos continued their repast.
We saw several kinds of birds. The most colorful were the small Rainbow Lorikeets. Others included the Laughing Kookaburra and the Frogmouth.
We were shown a Spotted-Tailed Quoll, a rarely seen species. It is an aggressive creature, darting up its cage to grab the food offered to it.
There were a few Koala’s (they are not bears). Koalas only eat Eucalyptus leaves, which are not all that nutritious. Therefore they are not energetic & spend almost all their time sleeping. Our guide woke one up. He looked very bored, like a guy who has just been told to go back to work. But he was a trouper, tolerating everyone petting his shoulder while he stared resignedly off into space.
An Echidna is a marsupial that looks kind of like a porcupine. It has a long nose with a longer tongue & eats ants. For defense it rolls up in a ball with all of its spines sticking out. The Echidna here can never be released into the wild because it has only three legs, which prevents it from effectively rolling into a ball. When he finished the food he was given he toddled over to the attendant and looked up expectantly, indicating that he knew there was more where that came from.
The Tasmanian Bettong is a furry little creature that is now extinct on the mainland, largely due to foxes, dogs & cats. It is nocturnal, very small and thus not often seen.
Fred is a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, named for the yellow crest on its head. Fred is (really!) 103 years old. He was inherited by Bonorong from Fred’s original owner. He is very loud & talkative. If you say “Hello, Fred” he will say it back. When Rick walked by without talking to him Fred said “What’s your name, mate?” For an old guy he can put up quite a squawk. We saw a few other birds around the park unenclosed, particularly a free Sulphur Crested Cockatoo sitting high in a dead tree on the edge of the park.
Wombats are furry creatures. They are raised at Bonorong for about 3 years before being set free. The small ones enjoy & need a lot of cuddling & care, but at that age they turn, sometimes suddenly, and can attack their handlers. They are nocturnal & normally you will only see their behinds, covered with especially thick & hard skin, sticking out of their holes.
The Tasmanian Devil is the quintessential animal of Tasmania. It looks nothing like the one in the Warner Brothers cartoons, but it does have a reputation for being extremely aggressive & nasty. If you see several of them digging into a carcass, baring their teeth & screaming at each other, you might think that reputation deserved. But mostly they are not like that. They are an endangered species today, mostly because of a virulent strain of facial tumors that is very contagious. Bonorong is one of several places in Tasmania & on the mainland that are trying to protect the species by keeping some of them isolated from others of their kind. They are marsupials. The mother gives birth to about 25 babies at a time, each about the size of a grain of rice. But she only has 4 teats in her pouch so the first four to latch on will be the only ones that survive. She eats the rest (yuk). Their normal life span is only about 6 years.
We made it back to the ship just at 9:00, in time to have dessert with our tablemates. The ship sailed down the Derwent River, then turned north to sail back up the east coast of Tasmania. The plan was to turn west after we reached the north end of the island, then sail west along the Australian coast to our next stop, Kangaroo Island. The weather was supposed to be less severe north of Tasmania than if we had taken our scheduled route northwest from the southern tip of Tasmania. As the Captain commented later the next day, however, it would be nice if the weather forecasters were aboard to experience just how wrong they can be.
Sydney, Australia
After a fairly rough crossing of the Tasman Sea we got up early for the sail-in to Sydney on the morning of February 10. As we stood outside the harbor shortly before sunrise we could already tell that the morning would be gray & overcast.
This was a shame because the sail-in to Sydney is one of the best in the world. Fortunately, the last time we were here it was a beautiful morning for the sail-in with the sunrise giving a special glow to the buildings. This one wasn’t like that, so you should go see it here:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/sydney-australia-day-1
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/sydney-australia-day-2
As we started to sail in, the sun tried to rise but made very little progress in lighting the area.
We passed Fort Denison, a tiny island that served as a punishment site during convict times and was fortified as a defensive installation during World War I. Behind it as we passed was the iconic Opera House.
We sailed under the Harbor Bridge, one of Sydney’s iconic sights, built in the 1930’s.
Inside the bridge we proceeded to our docking location at White Bay. The best docking space is at Circular Quay, right next to the Opera House. The Amsterdam was last allowed to dock there in 2015. Now the rule is that ships that can fit under the bridge must go to White Harbor while larger ships, like the Norwegian Jewel in the Opera House picture above, get to dock at Circular Quay just outside the bridge. White Bay is much less convenient, requiring a long shuttle bus ride to downtown. This time, because they are building a light rail downtown, our shuttle bus only went as far as Darling Harbor, a substantial walk from downtown.
Well, unfortunately you are not going to see much more of Sydney unless you look at the 2016 links above. Rick got sick the day before we arrived in Sydney so he spent almost the entire two days here in bed. That really put a damper on things. But we had tickets to see Carmen at the Opera House the night we were in Sydney – opening night, no less. So we had to go to that, sick or not. In fact, Rick had purchased the tickets for five people & he had to be there to show his identification in order to pick up the tickets. So if Rick didn’t go no one could go & the tickets were quite expensive. So we went. And it was great. You can’t take pictures during the opera, but pictures were allowed inside while the curtains were closed.
At the opera we were seated near some people from the Viking Sun, which is also on a world cruise. The ship had been docked right next to us for most of the day, then left. We assumed its visit to Sydney was over, so were surprised its passengers were at the opera. One of them told us that the Sun had moved to Circular Quay just for the night in order to ferry its passengers to the opera and would be docked next to us again in the morning. Well, that is a pretty expensive thing to do, thousands of dollars. We heard later that, since this was Viking’s first world cruise, the real motivation for the move was to get publicity photos of the ship docked next to the Opera House. Be that as it may, this made HAL look pretty bad in comparison. Worse, a private company called Captain Cook usually runs a ferry from White Bay to Circular Quay for about $5 each way, but it wasn’t available to us this visit, when it would have been particularly useful because of the street construction limiting the shuttle bus. It turned out that Viking had rented the entire operation exclusively to ferry its passengers to and from Circular Quay. One of HAL’s officers was heard to comment that this was a good idea but not within HAL’s budget. It seemed to us that HAL might have used its tender boats to ferry passengers to Circular Quay, but it didn’t do that either.
Our friends Robert, Bill & Peggy went on an excursion the first day in Sydney to climb to the top of the Harbor Bridge. It’s expensive & very elaborate, with special clothes and everything tethered to ensure nothing can fall off. You can’t take a camera up with you, but the folks that run the tour are happy to sell you some pictures. We saw people at the top of the bridge on our last visit, but we didn’t go up there.
On the second day in Sydney Rick was still bedridden, so Mary set out with Bill, Robert & Peggy to visit The Rocks, the area around Circular Quay where the first convict settlement was located. They took the shuttle to Darling Harbor then walked the rest of the way, very doable on a nice day like this. They spent time in a weekend market, explored the area & had lunch at a restaurant before returning to the ship.
We set sail from Sydney, hoping that Rick would be fully recovered & ready for a full day in Tasmania.
BADER JOURNAL 