Posted by Paul Groves on March 11, 2019

HAL 2019 World – Days 44-46 Sea Days and Townsville, Australia

As we travel up the eastern coast of Australia, we parallel the Great Barrier Reef.  This is the largest coral reef system in the world.  Townsville is a very nice city overlooked by Castle Hill.  Our tour took us up to the top of this hill, but the fog and a sudden rain shower limited the view from the top when we arrived.  We did see the marker for Captain Robert Towns who gave the town its name.  Castle Hill also played a role during WWII as a lookout and American military equipment is thought to be buried in caves dug during the war and sealed up later.  None of this equipment has ever been found, however.

We visited Reef HQ, the town’s aquarium focused on the coral reef.  Huge tanks contain many forms of coral and other sea life.  This aquarium gives a window to the coral reef and also acts as a great educational experience for visitors.  We were able to see the fish popularized by Finding Nemo.

Docents took us through the various portions of the aquarium and explained what we were seeing.  I was interested in the touching pool where we saw animals that keep the sand clean by eating the sand and passing out pellets of “cleaned” sand.  The hermit crabs were also interesting to see.

Also interesting were the eels and the Crown-of-Thorns starfish which is one of the species doing quite a bit of harm to the coral reef as well as the damage done by climate change.  Townsville had just experienced unusually heavy rains before our visit which flooded parts of the town, but the excessive runoff was also said to be “smothering” the coral reef.  Hopefully, the reef can withstand these various conditions.

At the end of our tour we visited the turtle hospital.  Marine turtles are brought here for various reasons, such as being hit by boats, being hurt by nets or hooks, or by ingesting plastic.  The two turtles we saw were healthy and ready to be returned to the areas where they were picked up.  They had “floating syndrome” which meant that the turtles were not diving as normal, but simply floating on the ocean surface.  Our guide said these turtles had eaten plastic and were basically very constipated.  They were treated with mild antibiotics and human laxatives, kept in tanks where the water was changed frequently and then fed until they were back to a normal weight for their age.

After the tour, Ron visited another museum that had a display of the war ship that came to find the mutineers from the mutiny on the Bounty story.  This was called the HMS Pandora.  Fourteen of the mutineers were caught and kept in an 11 foot by 18 foot wooden enclosure on the quarter deck (the back of the ship).  This area came to be known as Pandora’s Box.  The ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and sank.  The prisoners had to scramble to save themselves.  The ten surviving prisoners were brought back to England to face trial and I believe that three of them were hanged.  The important point is that a great effort was made to find and return these mutineers to England.

About eight kilometers from Townsville is Magnetic Island, named because the island seemed to affect the compasses on Captain Cook’s ship.  This is a popular place because of its beaches, wildlife viewing and access to the Great Barrier Reef.


Posted by Paul Groves on March 9, 2019

HAL 2019 World – Day 43 Sydney, Australia – Part 2

Today’s excursion is “Discover The Blue Mountains”.

The Blue Mountains are a range of mountains that begin about 30 miles west of Sydney.  The name Blue Mountains is derived from the blue tinge the range takes on when viewed from a distance. Due to their rugged nature it took many years before early settlers found a way across the mountains enabling the population to expand into the country.  Today’s trip was to a particularly scenic spot called “Echo Point”.

As we drove, our guide pointed out the large group of tall orange posts with white bands and black plumage in the highway median.  This is a memorial to the Australian Light Horse Brigade from WWI.  This is dedicated to these heroic troops and to their horses that could never return.  The white band is a reference to the departing soldiers’ innocence of war.  The abstract plumage attached to each marker represents the emu plumes attached to the Light Horsemen’s slouch hats.

Australian quarantine regulations prevented the return of any horse that had survived the battles. The old and sick horses were shot, while the remainder were handed over to British units. As a reminder of every Light Horseman’s loss in leaving his horse behind, there is no physical representation of the horse in the sculpture.

Our first stop was the Featherdale Wildlife Park.  This small park showcases a very nice selection of animals that are indigenous to Australia. They had baby wallabies, laughing Kookaburras, a golden pheasant (actually this is Chinese, but pretty), koalas, Dingos, echidnas and many more.  My favorites were the world’s most venomous snake, the Inland Taipan, and the world’s smallest penguins.  We were only able to spend an hour here but we could have spent many more.  Fun place to visit. 

We continued our drive to Echo Point and reached it about an hour later.

You can easily see why it took so long to find a way thru these mountains.  The main feature here was the rock formation called “Three Sisters”.  Aboriginal people say there were actually 7 sisters at one time.  We had about 15 minutes to take pictures.

A short distance from Echo Point was a small theatre where we attended a show called “Waradah”.  The show was about 1/2 hour and presented a short history of the people’s who settled Australia, their hardships, and struggles to survive.

After the show we boarded our bus and headed to the Mountain Heritage Hotel Spa & Retreat where we were served a very enjoyable lunch and a glass of wine.  Based on the the Hotel’s decor, you could easily expect to see Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple step thru one of the doorways.

The drive back to the ship was very quick and quiet (a lot of people slept after the lunch).

Next up, a couple of sea days and then our next stop of Townsville, a ways north along the eastern coast of Australia.

Posted by Paul Groves on March 8, 2019

HAL 2019 World – Days 40-42 Sea Days & Sydney, Australia – Part 1

Before we move on to Australia, I’d like to say that I was very impressed with New Zealand.  The people and country felt “young”.  If I were to consider moving to another country, New Zealand would be the first place.  

After we left Picton, we sailed across the Tasman Sea for two days.  This area is notorious for rough seas and weather.  However our two days were very calm and enjoyable. 

We arrived in Sydney, Australia at 5:00 am.

Sydney’s first settlement was a penal colony established by the British in Australia.  In addition to  the British soldiers on the first ships, there were the first 850 convicts transported from England.  Many hundreds more were to follow (If you’re interested in what crimes it took to get transported to Australia, buy a bottle of 19 Crimes wine.  You can use information from the bottle label and access a fun site on the internet to find out why the prisoner on your label was transported).

The first penal colony was to be located a little further south at Botany Bay (a side note: the Star Trek prison starship S.S. Botany Bay was named after this colony.  See TV episode “Space Seed” and movie “Wrath of Khan”).  However it was found to be a very untenable location and was soon moved to the Sydney location.

Sydney is a very modern city but still has pockets of old buildings from long ago intermixed with the new.  It’s major landmarks are the Harbour Bridge (often called “the coat hanger”) and the world famous Opera House.

Our tour today was a drive around the city and a visit to the Opera House.  However our friends went on the Harbour Bridge climb.  They changed into jumpsuits and were harnessed to railings and walked up to the apex of the bridge on a girder about 3 1/2 feet wide.  They were on the climb when we were at the Opera House so I’m pretty sure that’s them in then closeup.  Having a great desire to continue living, Paul and I declined the tour.

The Opera House is actually composed of 7 different performance venues with the two largest being the Concert Hall and Joan Sutherland Theatre (Opera).  Many times there are simultaneous events at each venue making it a very busy complex.  We were privileged to hear the Symphony orchestra practicing while we were there.

The exterior of the building is meant to be “shells”.  Each shell appears uniformly white from a distance, but they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours: glossy white and matte cream.  Due to the design they never need cleaning as the dirt washes off in the rain!  The shells also gave the interior a very spacious feeling.

Open to the outside, the building contains numerous cafes, restaurants, bars and retail outlets.

After our tour was over, we returned to the ship.  A couple of hours later Ron returned to the Opera House to see a performance of “Turandot”.  The theater was packed.  The  production was outstanding and the acoustics in the hall were great.  He was sorry to see it end.

Posted by Paul Groves on March 2, 2019

HAL 2019 World – Day 39 Picton, New Zealand

Our fourth port in New Zealand was at the small town of Picton.   We boarded a bus and drove about 40 minutes to the wine vineyards for our excursion, The Wines of Marlborough.  New Zealand has become an important wine producing country.  Grape growing and wine making in New Zealand only began in the 1980’s.

We visited three wineries in this region, Wither Hills, Forrest, and Spy Valley.  About 80% of the wine grown in this region is made into Sauvignon Blanc wines.  Some of the wineries included detailed talks about the grapes grown, harvesting techniques, and conditions needed for the various wines produced.  Some wineries pretty much focused on the tasting.

Each tasting began with a Sauvignon Blanc, followed by a different white or rosé, a red Pinot Noir, and ending with a sweeter wine such as a Riesling or Gewurztraminer.

Small samples of each were tasted, so even though we tried 12 different sips over a three hour period, we did not feel lightheaded at all.  The tasting rooms, or cellar doors, were all very nice and sometimes surrounded by the oak barrels used in the wine making process for the various wines.

The Forrest winery was located on a beautiful plot of land with interesting surroundings such as this water area.

We learned about and even tasted some of the grapes used for the wines.  I was surprised to learn that red wine grapes, when squeezed, still give off a white wine juice.  The color comes from the skins of the red grapes.  I was also interested to learn that when the grapes are harvested affect the sweetness of the wine as well as how long the fermentation process is allowed to continue.  Since sugars are turned into alcohol, a dryer (less sweet) wine is produced when the fermentation process is allowed to convert all of the sugars into alcohol or when the grapes are picked earlier in the season.  Chemistry is everywhere.

The Spy Valley winery gets its name from the fact that located about five minutes further the up the valley are two huge antenna once used for spying.

Posted by Paul Groves on March 2, 2019

HAL 2019 World – Days 37-38 Sea Day & Wellington, New Zealand

Ok…get out your NoDoze because this is going to be a long one!

Let me backup a few days.  Since we left South America we’ve had Polynesian cultural ambassadors on board.  They taught classes in dancing, crafts such as necklace and bracelet making, and, taught Ukulele classes. They were scheduled to leave upon the ship reaching Auckland, New Zealand.

So on the sea day before we reached Auckland, they had final two events.  The first event was their final singing and dancing performance.  The second was a performance by the ships guests/students singing and playing the Ukulele.  Paul was one of the performers.  In the picture he’s sitting center in the second row wearing a bright blue shirt.  They played Tahitian and Polynesian songs.  For just learning to play, they did a great job!

Now let’s fast forward to today.

We arrived in Wellington early in the day. This is the capital city of New Zealand and is the home of New Zealand’s movie industry.  The female Prime Minister lives here and works in the building known as “The Beehive”.  Because of that, she is often referred to as the “Queen Bee”.  

Our excursion today was “Lord of the Rings Locations/WETA”. 

On the way to our tour, our guide pointed out the Wellington sign.  Unofficially the city’s motto is “Wellington Will Blow You Away” as the city is often very windy.  

He also indicated that because a lot of the city is built on a hillside, many homeowners have had their own cable car built from their garage on the street up to their home.

Another unique feature of the city are the three houses called “The Painted Ladies” which are styled on homes in San Francisco.

Our guide also pointed out the Te Papa Tongarewa( “Te Papa Tongarewa translates literally to “container of treasures”) National Museum. More about this later.

We then proceeded to the WETA Cave.  We were there for about 2 hours and saw props, costumes, creatures and models made by them for the “Lord Of The Rings”, “The Hobbit”, and lots of other movies as well as a short documentary about the history of their film-making.  The life sized models of the characters were great.

After WETA we drove to the top of Mt Victoria where some of the filming for the “Lord of The Rings” movies took place.  It was fun to see the real site and compare it to what it looked like in the movie and know that if the camera had moved a foot one way or another you’d be looking at the city!  We also went to 3 other filming sites there as well.

On the way back to the ship our guide dropped us off back at the Museum.  There is no charge to visit the museum except for the special exhibits.  There was a special exhibit about China’s Terra-cotta Warriors but since we’d seen them a couple of years ago in China, we decided to skip this one.  Instead we went to the exhibit on the WWI Gallipoli campaign battles.  I’m not going to talk about the campaign here but just say that it was a fiasco.  

The exhibit traced the battles from the beginning to the end specifically from the New Zealand troops point of view.  Scattered throughout the exhibition were huge sculptures (made by WETA) of people involved in the battles.  They were amazingly realistic even though most were over 15 ft tall!  The exhibition was very well done and very emotionally moving.  

What impresses me the most about New Zealand is the inclusion and respect of the indigenous people, the Māori, in all aspects of New Zealand life.  In the Gallipoli exhibition, the displays were not only captioned in English but also in the Māori language often referred to as te reo “the language”, short for te reo Māori.

At the end of the exhibit you had an opportunity to make a paper poppy with a message about the personal impact of the exhibition on you and then leave it at the foot of the soldier in the next room.

In the exhibitions about the indigenous peoples we saw this huge piece of handmade Māori cloth on the wall. It had to be at least 15 x 20 ft.  Very beautiful.

Something fun we found was a life sized replica of a blue whale heart.  Ginormous!

After two hours in the museum our brains were about to explode so we headed back to the ship.

 On the way back we noticed the the cross walk light used a Māori warrior doing the “Haka”.  We’ll say more about that in our presentation when we get back.