We have been on board the Viking Venus for 10 days now and are having a wonderful time. We have visited 5 ports and spent 5 days at sea. Australia is really big!
Our first port stop was on Jan 22 in Brisbane. We took a Panoramic Brisbane tour and saw much of the city which is a very beautiful with lots of skyscrapers and parks. Brisbane is hosting the Olympics in 2032, so there is a lot of building going on. Our tour took us to the top of Mt Coot-tha Summit Lookout where we had a wonderful view of the city and suburbs. Our ship was docked near a wetland and before we left port, Mark was thrilled to see some new bird species.
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| Brahminy Kite |
Our next stop on Jan 24, was at the Whitsunday Islands, a group of 74 islands that reminded us a lot of the Caribbean. Our excursion here was aboard smaller boats and we sailed around many of the islands and saw beautiful sandy beaches and green islands. Much of the islands are national parklands.
On January 25, we visited Townsville and took the Townsville Orientation tour. We walked along the beach on the “strand” and saw several red tailed Black Cockatoos. We drove all around town and then up to the top of a beautiful red sandstone monolith called Castle Rock where we had 45 minutes to walk the trails to some of the overlooks and have great views of Townsville, the ocean and surrounding area.
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| Red Tailed Black Cockatoo |
Continuing north on the ship, we spent the 26th in the Cairns area. We took the Jungle Train, Wildlife and Skyrail Tour. The first part of our tour was a ride on the Kuranda Scenic Railway. It went up into the Barron Gorge National Park through a dense and beautiful rainforest with lots of deep canyons and lovely waterfalls. We saw Stormy Creek falls and Barron falls. We exited the train at the mountain top town of Kuranda and had lunch at the Rainforest Station Nature Park. After lunch we visited the nature park and saw many native Australian animals including koalas, dingos wallabies, Tasmanian devils, wombats, kangaroos, and crocodiles. Mark was quite happy to pet a kangaroo. Then we went to the Skyway Rainforest Cableway and took cable cars back down to the valley floor. It started to rain while we were on the cable car so it really felt like we were in a rain forest. The Cable cars stopped at 2 places and we could get out and take short hikes (in the rain) to see waterfalls and the rain forest close up. It was a very fun day.
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| Tasmanian Devil |
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| Dingos |
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| Grey Kangaroo |
Today, the 30th of January, we were in Darwin, or as they call it here, “the top end” for the morning. We visited the very nice Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery. We learned much about the flora and fauna of the area, as well as facts about its history. Darwin has had quite an interesting history. In 1942, its harbor was attacked by 144 Japanese airplanes which pretty much destroyed the harbor and town. On December 25,1973, Cyclone Tracy pretty much leveled Darwin. It was quite the disaster, but the town has rebuilt and is a very nice city of @150,000 people.
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| Local Birds of Darwin |
We have spent 5 days at sea so far and manage to keep very busy. We go to an art class and belong to a progressive trivia team. We also attend many talks by prominent local scholars on the history of Australia the flora and fauna of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef and Australian English : What Makes it Different... this was interesting because 30% of the passengers are Australian! We try to walk the deck to get our steps in (if it isn’t to hot and humid) Speaking of temperatures, it has consistently been in the 90”s with 70% humidity or higher. It is too hot to sit by the pool. We love to sit by the windows and watch the clouds go by and the weather change. One day we went on a galley tour and saw the amazing stainless steel kitchens where they cook for 750 passengers plus the crew. We also seem to eat a lot!
Aboriginal Dot Painting 
Iris Fold Cards
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| One of the many galley stations |
That pretty much brings us up to date. More later…
