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Published: November 5th 2015
Morton Bay Sunrise
Our last morning on the Pacific Dawn. Some holidays should never end, and Cruising P & O is one of those. Rooms made up daily, lots of activities every day, places to discover, new people to meet, not to mention a chocolate on the pillow in the evening, all made up to a great 10 day cruise.
The journey from Doini Island PNG back to Brisbane has two days at sea before arriving early Saturday morning in Morton Bay and then on up the Brisbane River to the Portside Terminal.
So what do you do for a couple of days at sea? Once again, there are many activities each day both educational and physical as advertised in the daily news. I had won a Titanic Experience in a competition to have photos taken on the bow sprite the first day on the way back. Unfortunately, 40k winds prevented that happening, and sadly, when rescheduled for the following afternoon, the winds were not much different. While there were no icebergs to add reality to the experience, the Captain said no, and that's that! I concur with safety first, so this is commentary, not any complaint.
The art auctions continued each afternoon and were quite enjoyable. There
map with notes
This rather crude map shows the circuit we took in PNG. Alotau was our first port of call, and from there we went to the Triobriand Islands, landing at Kativa, then heading north to New Britain and the port of Rabaul. Heading south we stopped at Kativa and then Doini Islands before the final leg back to Brisbane. was a painting, an enhanced limited edition which Margaret liked. It was in the silent auction first night at sea, but my McScrooge bid, while the highest was below reserve. The painting was an autumn scene with impressionist trees enhanced with highly textured leaves. In the photos you will see a full original by the same artist and get an idea of the texture involved. The enhanced prints are the same image as the 'Original', printed and then the original artist enhances the print with oil colours and giving a similar texture to an original.
On the last night of the cruise, the same painting came up again, and another lady was busting to get it, but she also knew Margaret was keen. Before the auctions I said to her that I wouldn't bid against her, and so she carried the artwork off the ship the next morning for the reserve price.
We did sin in the auctions, purchasing two limited edition paintings to freshen up our home. Our current paintings date back 60 years for me for two of them (from my parents) and another we purchased 35 years ago in NZ. Time for a change. We
Thomas Kinkade promotion
Some days there was a biography of a specific artist and a display of their works. It was at the Kinkade display that we chose a townscape from his home town. Kinkade died a few years ago. loved the detail and story behind the Kinkade paintings. Sadly, from China photos of copies are printed and sold for peanuts. These prints have three unreproducible copyright inclusions. The other painting is by Viktor Shvaiko, born in Russia, but left that behind and painted throughout Europe, with Venice being one of his favoured cities.
On our last day at sea I did the Ship's Tour which included The Bow anchorage station, through the main galley, the engine room control centre, and finally the Bridge. Sadly, no cameras were allowed on this tour. I had however, in a cheeky conversation with the Captain, gained permission to photograph from the bridge, and also permission from the Duty Captain to photograph the winches. Our tour leader was most upset, and when we got to the engine room she made a very definite point of no photos. Sadly, I hadn't run into the Chief engineer else that also may have changed! Because of the closed circuit TV from the control room around the various stations of the engine room, we were able to see an engineer repairing a diesel injector on one of the Mann diesels. The ship was running on three out
Kinkade
Painter of light of four engines at this point. I felt quite at home in the engine room environment - it brought back memories of my apprenticeship in New Zealand Railways Woburn workshop where we overhauled 1500 HP diesel Electric Locos. The ship is driven by electric motors powered from large diesel electric donkeys. My suggestion to P & O is to have a set of photos that travellers get as part of their tour that show what ships engines look like, galley photos etc that we can have for memories and also to show in Blogs. For example, there was a very talented fruit and vegetable carver, but I cannot show you his beautiful work. The only photo we all got, was the group with the real Captain.
There are theme nights scattered throughout the cruise. Probably the Gatsby Night had the most participants. Sadly some had bolder ambitions than any form of dress sense, while others including many children really did impress.
We rose early for the sunrise on the final morning as we sailed down Morton Bay. We had missed the colourful skies up in the tropics, so really felt a welcome on that final stretch home. We
were told that the cruise started as we sailed under the Gateway Bridge, so I guess it was completed at that same point on the Brisbane River. It was also great to see so many Jacaranda trees in full flower along the river's edge. Locally they are called 'The Exam tree', because kids know that when they are in flower it is school final exams for many high school students.
Now, a cruise blog should include interesting trivia. The Pacific Dawn has around 2000 guests and 750 crew. Did you know that three crew are devoted full time to peeling potatoes! The ship uses 1.8 million squares of toilet paper a week! (Check your share holding in toilet roll manufacturing) Eggs, around 209,142 were consumed on our cruise. Potatoes - 9 Tonnes per week split 5000/4000 between French fries and roasted potatoes. You will have noticed that I contributed daily to the egg consumption and also had my fair share of the 3 tonnes of bacon consumed on the cruise. The kitchen dishwashers handle 3000 plates in an hour! I was able to accurately predict that for dinner on the last night we would be able to choose Barramundi.
I cheated, I saw the boxes being moved from the chiller to the food preparation table!
Though we were tied up alongside around 7:00am, we had a couple of hours to enjoy our breakfast and several cups of coffee before our disembarkation time.
Once off the ship, the process through immigration and Customs was like any terminal or port. My wooden dolphin was examined and we were waved through without delay. Others were not so lucky. The man with the turtle shell had to hand it over. Not sure if he will see it again.
Sadly, we now make our own beds, coffees, dinners and breakfasts, but have great memories of our 10 day adventure.
I would like to make a special mention of Chris and Michael in the Waterfront Restaurant and our cabin steward, Geffrey. These guys looked after us very well throughout the cruise. As I publish this, Chris and his fiancé will be about to marry, and then both return to the ship in about 8 weeks. Good luck guys!
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Mum & Dad
non-member comment
All good things must come to an end. Money gone memories banked photos filed and home in sight. Good blog of trip interesting and entertaining. Now to the next chapter towing your home.