Southern Australia

 February 22, 2025

On February 11, we arrived at Albany, at 7am. We took a tour called “Valley of the Giants”. This was a one and a half hour drive from the ship. For the first hour the landscape was rather flat and scrubby with lots of cattle, sheep and kangaroos. For the last half hour, the land got much hillier with many more trees. We arrived at the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk and it was amazing. A gently sloping ramp led you up to the canopy walk 131 feet in the air - way up in the tree tops. The walk was 1968.5 ft long. The trees were very large : red tingles, yellow tingle, Karris and Marris (mostly types of eucalyptus). It was very impressive. Afterwards, we took a walk on the “ancient empire” trail and could see the trees from the ground.  It was a great place. 

We stopped for a few minutes at the “Green Pool” in Williams Bay National Park for an impressive view of The Great Southern Ocean.

We had a fun lunch stop at the Lake House Winery near Denmark, Australia. It was a lovely setting overlooking a small lake. They served us a large variety of appetizer type foods on large platters for the table to share, and they were quite generous with their wine also. It was a very nice day.

On February 14, we arrived in Adelaide. Our tour today was to the Barossa Wine Region where we toured the Seppeltsfield Estate VIneyard. It was a fun and interesting tour. The Seppeltsfield family from Poland established the winery in the 1840’s and still owns it. The buildings are very old and beautiful and we saw the grape bushes( they do not grow on vines because they must be hand picked) . The processing building is built on a hill so gravity can move the grape juice down the hill as it is processed. We also had a fun time tasting 3 of their wines.

When we finished our tour, we had enough time to take a commuter train from the harbor to downtown Adelaide and got to spend about an hour walking around the lovely city.

February 16 saw us docked in Melbourne. What a beautiful city and so huge (5.4 million). We had a lovely tour around the city seeing the glass skyscrapers, the sports complexes and the cultural area. We stopped for a nice guided walk in the beautiful Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Our guide pointed out many beautiful trees and plants including one, the Wollemi Pine which dates back to the time of dinosaurs and was thought to be extinct until a small group was discovered in the Blue Mountains of Australia in 1994. The original grove is in a very secret and protected spot, but seedlings have been grown and shipped around the world to botanical gardens and nurseries in an effort to save the species. We had heard about the pine on a dvd before we came to Australia and were very excited to see it.

Wollemi Pine

Purple Swamphen

We also visited The Shrine of Remembrance, a very impressive building honoring the service of Australian war veterans since WWI. We made a quick stop at the Fitzroy Gardens and saw the Conservatory there and also Cook’s Cottage which was the home of Captain Cook’s parents and was built in 1755 in England. In 1934 it was sold, taken apart, brought to Melbourne and rebuilt in the garden.

Shrine of Remembrance

Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory

Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory

Interior of Shrine of Remembrance

Cook's Cottage

On February 17, we docked in Burnie, Tasmania. We had a tour of the ship’s bridge this morning. It was very interesting. Supposedly they no longer have any paper charts on the ships. This afternoon, we took an excursion along the northern coastline of Tasmania. We saw Table Rock Lighthouse and beautiful views of the ocean. We also went to Fern Glade Reserve, a very nice natural area along the Emu River, and were able to take a nice walk along the river. Unfortunately, we did not see either platypuses or emus on our walk!

Ship's Helm

Our final port was Eden, Australia on Australia’s  “Sapphire Coast”. We had a tour along the coast and had a chance to stop at a couple of small towns along the way. We also visited the Eden Killer Whale Museum and learned all about the history of the whaling industry in Eden. Nowadays, Eden is known as one of the best places to go whale watching if you are there in the spring or fall. People at the museum told us that they sit out on the deck of the museum and watch whales breaching in the bay.

'Big Tom' Killer Whale

Time to head home. We left Sydney at 12:10 pm, Thursday, February 20 for a 13 hour and 15 minute flight to San Francisco. This was followed by a 2 hour flight to Portland. We arrived in  Portland at 12:30 pm, Thursday, February 20, just 20 minutes after we left … this international dateline stuff can really mess up your mind and body!!!

We had a wonderful time on our trip. We met lots of nice people, learned a lot about Australia, did some fun art projects, played a lot of trivia and ate lots of delicious food. The hotel manager said that 11,172 bottles of wine were consumed during our trip. (Wine is included with lunch and dinner)). He said that he tried to figure out how many calories that was, but gave up! Most of all, we discovered what a huge and beautiful country Australia is and hope to able to go back someday and see more of it.

Art Class

Music Trivia

Sushi

S

Sushi at Poolside

Tomahawk Steak Night

Australian Gannet

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

Indonesia and Western Australia

February 10,

On Feb 1, we entered Indonesia and visited Komodo Island National Park on Rincon Island. We went on a raised boardwalk and saw several Komodo dragons. They seem rather large and slow, but we were told that they can move rather fast if they want. You don’t want to get close to them. They have a venom that has a lot of bacteria in it and keeps wounds from healing. After a couple of days the prey dies and the dragons get a feast.

On Feb 2 we docked on the island of Bali. That first day, Sunday we took a tour around Denpasar the provincial capital of Bali. We visited Hindu temples, the city market, a museum and saw Bali dancers. The island is an enclave of Hinduism in Indonesia (which is predominately Moslem) There are  beautiful temples everywhere and most homes have temples also and they leave offerings of food and gifts out for their gods. The Bali dancers and musicians are amazing artists. That being said, it is very densely populated and motor scooters are everywhere. They weave in and out of traffic and sometimes had 2 adults and 3 children on them. It is truly scary riding on a bus and looking out of the windows. 

Offerings at a temple

On Monday our tour was the Uluwatu Temple on the coast high above the Indian Ocean and it was very nice. There were however, the monkeys! We were warned about the monkeys before we got off the bus - the guide told us to take of hats, necklaces, bracelets and even glasses because the monkeys would steal them. We saw lots of monkeys and even saw some take stuff. They have an employee called the “monkey man” who tries to get stuff back and yells at the monkeys! Our next stop was the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park. There were many beautiful statues of Hindu gods there including one of Vishnu on his bird mount Garuda that is 121 meters!

Vishnu on his bird mount Garuda

After 2 days on Bali we were at sea for 3 days heading back south to Australia. Our first day at sea was rather challenging as there were 2 cyclones in our vicinity but moving away from us. The captain said that the highest waves were about 24 feet. That lasted just a day and seas were back to normal. We went to our art classes and team trivia. We listened to talks by the hotel management, ships captain and chief engineer telling us about how the ship is run and answering questions. They even took us on a virtual tour of the engine rooms - all very interesting. We watched a movie on the pool deck one evening.

On Feb 7, we docked at Freemantle/Perth Western Australia for 2 days. On the first day we took a tour of Freemantle on foot and the Western Australia Maritime Museum. Our guide was very good and pointed out all the historical buildings including the Freemantle Prison which the English convict prisoners had to build themselves. In fact, convicts were responsible for building many of the original buildings in town. We finished our tour at the Maritime Museum and had a very nice visit there including seeing the Australia II sailboat which won the America’s cup race in 1983. 

Freemantle Prison

Freemantle Prison front gate

Western Australia Maritime Museum

The next day we had another interesting tour. We took a bus along the Swan River to Perth (20 km inland). We saw beautiful parks and homes along the river. We drove through downtown Perth with its beautiful glass skyscrapers. We saw neat pedestrian bridges, parks and huge sport complexes. We drove up to Kings Park and Botanic Garden . We saw the state war memorial with its beautiful views of Perth and then walked through the Botanical Garden and saw many native plants of Western Australia. The return to Freemantle was on a boat cruise down the Swan River, so we got to see another view of Perth and the countryside.

Perth

Pedestrian bridge

Giant Boab tree

State War Memorial

Our next port of call was in Busselton, Western Australia. We took a bus tour to Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park. Our first stop was at Ngilgi Cave. It was a beautiful cave with lots of stalactites and stalagmites, and drapes. It had 780 steps up and down. Surprisingly, it was not cold at all in the cave. It was just very humid. The second stop was at Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, a very lovely lighthouse with great views overlooking the ocean. We also saw many wild kangaroos in the fields along the road, which was really cool! Busselton has the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. It is 1.8 km long. You take a little train to the end of the jetty and then you can visit the underwater observatory. Under the jetty is a natural coral reef and you can see it through the windows of the observatory. It was really neat to see especially with all the Australian herring swimming around. It was a fun day. 

Train to the end of the Busselton Jetty

 

More next time….