Leaving Australia

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wednesday 7^th March 2012

A quick update on yesterday: We had dinner in the open air at the Opera Bar before going in to the Opera House for the Ukulele Orchestra concert. The building is amazing. And so too was the orchestra. You might think it would not work for the ukulele to play David Bowie, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, The Sex Pistols and Frank Sinatra … but by golly it did. The hall was a complete sell out and the roar from the crowd was fantastic. It was a truly memorable experience.

For today, Wednesday, this is not the most exciting day of our trip: we had to leave our lovely apartment. But it has to be said that our departure was as smooth as it could possibly be. A man arrived at our door and took all our luggage away and, while we settled our bill, it was all loaded into a waiting taxi that then took us to the ship where we dropped our luggage off and went and played. And when you have time to kill in Sydney, what are you to do except board another ferry. We went right up the river again which is an hour each way so it was lovely. In the evening we went for a walk round by the bridge and then the showers that had been forecast all day finally arrived. In buckets full! We dashed under the bridge for shelter but had to keep moving as the wind blew the rain in on us. And then when the rain was at its heaviest, we learnt that the bridge is made up of lots of pieces … with gaps between them. Through which large amounts of rain fall. So we got very, very wet. But at least here it’s warm rain.

The Queen Mary 2 is absolutely enormous. Some of the public rooms are very high and wide but on embarkation day, it’s impossible to see it at its best because it is full of very frantic people all trying to find their cabins, a cup of tea, some food and anything else you can think of. Our cabin is light and airy but the view from just about all the cabins on this ship are a lot poorer than the views from either the Elizabeth or the Victoria. The ship is 8 years old now and I guess ship design has changed a bit. It’s not possible here for us to look straight down at the sea. We look straight down onto a deck and the life raft launching gear. But if that’s the worst thing on board, then we shall do pretty well for the next 6 weeks!

<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday 8^th March 2012:

It chucked it down with rain when we awoke this morning and accompanied itself with thunder and lightning! So we hit the Chinese quarter where we both got the best and the cheapest ever hair cuts. Richard’s cost $10 and mine was $15 – a total of about £16.50 for both of us! Quick, efficient, fab and cheap. It would have cost $130 on the ship so very nearly ten times the cost!

And when we came out of the barber shop, the sun had come out so we hopped on yet another ferry and went to visit the maritime museum. It’s the best of its sort that we’ve found anywhere. They have a submarine that is amazing. Richard got chatting with another visitor who had served as a submariner and even he was impressed. Normally, museums strip out most of the equipment but nothing had gone. They still had the huge engines and all the batteries. Next to it was a destroyer from the late 1950s and, again, so much of it was just as it was when she was in active service. An absolutely fascinating visit.

And at the end of that, it was our last ever Sydney ferry back to the ship. Sailaway had been well publicised in Sydney so the quayside was packed with people waving us off under clear, star filled, moon lit skies. The city is very beautiful at night and as I write we are just watching the lights of Australia disappearing in the distance. Next stop is Papua New Guinea but not until we’ve had 3 whole days of rest at sea. Between us we have 4 very sore feet after 11 days of non-stop sight-seeing so we’re definitely ready for the rest.

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