Rough seas and stormy weather forced us to skip our next port of Tauranga, New Zealand, so we spent the extra day at sea and headed on to Auckland, where we were greeted by scattered clouds and intermittent autumn showers, but looking forward to some old and some new sights. We were thankful for the…
Continue reading →On the east coast of New Zealand’s north island, the port of Napier, with its vast timber export industry, is in the heart of sunny Hawke’s Bay, the second largest wine region in the country, though when we arrived the weather was cloudy and drizzling. Napier, the Art Deco capital of New Zealand with a…
Continue reading →Some places you can’t get enough of. So, we were really excited to return to New Zealand where Dean and I had spent a couple of weeks in 2009, working our way from the bottom of the south island to the top of the north, weaving in and out of towns, cities, countryside, wineries. We…
Continue reading →I’ve always had a distant fascination with Tasmania. It is a seemingly remote outpost island that is not much in the news, known for its native “devils”, and a stepping stone to Antarctica. We arrived in Hobart, Australia’s second oldest city located at the base of majestic Mount Wellington, at the height of their crisp…
Continue reading →The whole world is in love with Sydney and it’s easy to see why. Sydneysiders have it made with the city’s style, sophistication, friendly people, bustling art and entertainment, restaurants, museums. You could almost eat off the streets of this gleaming pristine city and the food wouldn’t be bad either, with great seafood a special…
Continue reading →Located on the banks of the Brisbane River, the capital city of Queensland is relaxed, friendly, cool, casual, and so beautiful with pristine clean streets, active downtown bicycle stations, rolling hills and, of course, the requisite football arena. Australians love their football, though Americans know it more commonly as rugby. And, hand in hand with…
Continue reading →The Whitsunday Islands, off the central coast of Queensland, Australia in the Great Barrier Reef, were discovered by Captain James Cook on the Sunday of the feast of Whitsun, observed seven weeks after Easter. However, as the International Date Line had not been established, it was actually Whit-Monday. We anchored off the resort destination of…
Continue reading →The relaxed ambiance is readily apparent in this north Queensland city, pronounced “Cans” by the Aussies. Cairns, Australia, is surrounded by tropical forests, coffee, tea, and sugar cane plantations and, of course, the living masterpiece of the Great Barrier Reef stretching along its coast. The area has two seasons, wet and dry, and can have…
Continue reading →The notoriously difficult waters of the Torres Strait are located between Australia and New Guinea and contain more than 274 small islands in the Queensland territory. The strait connects to the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system that stretches for 1,500 miles along the northeast coast of the continent. These waters require…
Continue reading →As culturally, historically, and even visually interesting Asia is, there was a collective readiness onboard to reach the shores of Australia and relax a bit in its western familiarity. However, Darwin, named after the famous evolutionist, Charles Darwin, is still a diverse mix of Asian culture and Australian heritage and, while my geographically-challenged mind thought…
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