Mega hot - mid 30s to 40.
We arrive (anchor off actually) in Cairns at 10am to the announcement that tenders to take us ashore will be on a club member basis. That is; people booked on official NCL (the cruise line) excursions first, platimum+ and platinum go second, then gold and silver members, then everyone else (ie us) queues up on a first come first served basis. We have an unofficial (ie. non NCL) snorkelling excursion booked to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as the official NCL one was fully booked and also it was more than twice the price of ours.
(To be a platinum+ member you have to clock up a total of 700 nights cruising with NCL. Now that’s a lot of cruising!)
We go at 1pm, so we have lots of time. However, there are other people on the same excursion who are platinum and gold members so we “buddy up” to get everyone off together. Truth be told, we just do as advised by the excursion organiser and more experienced cruisers, with the result that we are one of the first off the ship. A 30 min shuttle bus into Cairns and we are well early for our trip. We wander round the lagoon and marina area, which is exceedingly hot and humid, take a coffee and sandwich and then we’re off to board Skedaddle, our fast boat to the GBR.
Skedaddle travels at 30knts, which makes it one of the fastest boats and capable of offering half day scuba and snorkelling tours. We go through registration which involves assigning everyone a number, a stinger suit, a medical questionnaire and an embarcation signature. Then we are strapped in and endure a 1 hour high speed voyage to Hastings Reef. You cannot get up as the boat is too jumpy at this speed. Once there we don our stinger suits and line into three groups: scuba divers, snorkellers, amd glass bottom boaters. After half an hour the glass bottom boaters and snorkelers can swap over if they want.
We are moored at a buoy, one of several in the area and also in the locality are a couple of glass bottomed shallow boats moored up seemingly in the middle of nowhere for the use of any tour company.
The snorkeling is (for me - G), amazing. All sorts of colourful fish and coral. Blues, yellows, black and whites, reds, all sorts of shapes and sizes. Our leader spots a reef shark but by the time the news is shared it swims off - I missed it. Visibility is good down to 3m but a bit hazy after that so I stick to the reef and shallow canyons. The fish tend to hang around in groups and are completely oblivious to us above them unless you get too close. I do see a jellyfish but only a small harmless purple one, not the big dangerous ones with trailing stingers we are wearing the stinger suits for. I wish I had an underwater camera. The snorkeling gear is very good, much better than Fiji as I don’t need to empty the goggles once, and the stinger suits don’t impede, as long as you are under 20 stone that is. The assistance for non confident snorkelers is maybe not so good, but that doesn’t affect me.
My experience (- C) as a first time snorkeller (- having tried it for a few minutes in calm waters in Fiji) was a little different. There was a strong current and although I wore a bouyancy aid I had difficulty keeping up with the person from the boat leading our group. Initially I managed to see some coral reefs and many fish but soon I became tired and a wee bit scared. The guide had a buoy attached to him by rope for persons like me to hang on to for some help, but once I managed to catch up and hang on - with another struggling swimmer, we were told off because the current was strong and heeding his progress so we had to let go! Hence I was pushed by the current onto the reef, my bouyancy aid hindering my attempts to get away - I valiantly tried to avoid sitting on the coral reef -eventually the guide saw me and dragged me off ,but as he guided me towards the boat he saw a reef shark and excitedly swam off notifying other snorkellers leaving me to ungainly splashy swim/ doggy paddle back on my own! Ah well at least I tried it...Perhaps the trip in the glass bottom boat may be more productive....
Sadly the glass bottomed boat experience was a bit of a disappointment as the weather was turning and Laura the diving instructor driving the thing struggled to move it against the current. We saw some coral reef and then an argument/ heated dicussion took over between a climate change denying American and an enviromentally aware Canadian. “ The world has always gone through change - how do you know it’s man made this time”, “The theory is that as well as plastic the coral may be affected by all the sun products used by swimmers” “And he’s a Trump supporter” “Let’s get back to the coral” With someone muttering “ I thought we’d see some fishes” we returned to Skedaddle..
We really should have a caption competition for this pic!
Slowly I notice each time I pop my head up the weather is worsening. The current is stronger and the sea choppier. The little red translucent floaters I could see in the sunlight have disappeared, a bit like dust you see in the sun’s rays disappear in shadows. After another half hour or so we are called back to the boat. I guess we had around an hour and a half in total on the reef. A quick cup of tea and biscuit and we have to sign the registration form to confirm we are back on board.
This registration process could have something to do with the fact that a scuba tour once left an American couple, the Lonergans, on the reef and didn’t notice they weren’t back on board. By the time a search party was organised a couple of days later there was no sign of them. Eaten by sharks is the general assumption.
We once again strap ourselves back in, and hurtle back to Cairns at 30knts. It starts to rain and we see a storm is lashing the mainland over 30 miles away: lightening bolts and heavy rain. The sea is really choppy now and every so often the boat jumps into the air and lands rolling onto the next wave with a crash and a childish and scared “whoopee” from the loud Americans at the back. We were sat in the first few rows so enjoyed/endured the roller coaster ride!
At last we’re back on dry land and shuttled back to the boat for 6pm. We hear that others, booked on a skytrain ride over the Kurunda rain forest had their excursions cancelled due to storms, whereas as we were completely unaffected out on the reef. Back on the cruiseship it is as hot as ever with the storm passed, although the sea remains choppy.
Wed 20th Feb
Mega hot again, sunny 40 degrees
We decide to visit Cairns again, to the aquarium to tick off some of the fish we saw snorkeling. The tender operations start on the deck below ours so we wander along our deck and find the queue for the tendering snaking up the stairs, we join it on our level, near the front and kind of blend into the background. The sea is very rough this morning and they have trouble tieing up the tenders to take us ashore. The tenders are the ship’s lifeboats and they are too small and light in rough weather. Eventually, they manage it and we’re on, oblivious to the fact that they stopped tender operations after ours due to rough seas.
The aquarium was good, brand new and we learn interesting facts about stingrays and try to tick off fish we saw, or thought we saw whilst snorkeling, but we can’t remember there were so many. However, it was interesting to go round the aquarium with a new perspective now we’ve seen many of the fish in the wild.
A reef shark - one of which proved more interesting than Carol to our group leader yesterday
An idea of a bit of what we saw yesterday.
We head back to get the last tender back to the ship. Whoa! there must be over a thousand people in the queue, what a cock up! The weather is still causing problems and they’ve hired bigger boats for the tendering operations, but it’s still difficult and time consuming and worse, it’s low tide so the bigger boats can’t take their full capacity. We adjourn to the yacht club for beers until the queue starts moving. It takes ages and there is a lot of complaining. It takes us two and a half hours to get back to the cruise liner. Not good enough.
Thurs 21st Feb
Sunny 32 degrees
Today is one of two sea days as we head for Darwin.
However we awake this morning to discover that the ship had to return to near Cairns in the night - a complete U-turn due to a medical emergency resulting in a helicopter lift for a passenger to hospital. The helicopter couldn’t land due to high winds so the ship returned to the shelter of Cairns where the winching up of a body bag (with a living person inside we think) can proceed. This has put our arrival in Darwin back a whole day - instead of an 8am arrival we will not arrive until past 5pm on the 23rd Feb. We had a full day excursion booked for the 23rd which we are able to move on to the 24th but as the ship leaves that day it will be a shortened version.
Yesterday as we waited in the queue to board an elderly man was carried off accompanied by medical staff and his suitcases -we presume en route to hospital. A day before an elderly woman collapsed in the dining room and was stretchered out. We hope that will be the unlucky 3 medical incidents out of the way on this trip - but looking at the age and condition of many of the passengers can’t help but think that there may be several more before the trip is over. Rumours abound over the state of the person helicoptered off and we hear horror stories from people who have visited the doctor; $800 for 2 sleeping pills, $1,700 for a consultation with blood tests, antibiotics and an inconclusive outcome (if whatever it is doesn’t get better, come back and see me - yeah right!)
After 2 days (almost 3 actually with the U-turn) we have fallen into a bit of a routine: light breakfast, one hour sunbathing on the top deck, 40 minutes in the gym - Graham .Carol walking a over a couple of miles around the promenade deck - just under 3 laps around the ship equal a mile - to work up an appetite for lunch. After lunch a sleep and bum around until a respectable cocktail hour before dinner followed by too many drinks after dinner. Wake up with a headache and start all over again. Sunbathing on the top deck is challenging for our reserved senses; winds of minimum 20 knots (our speed), ultra annoying loud Americans, and a really distasteful array of fat bodies which really should belong in clothes. How some of these people got on an aeroplane defies belief. The two pools are full of bodies which makes it impossible to swim until the sun goes down by which time the pool water is more than cloudy with sun tan lotion and God knows what else. I don’t think we’re cut out for the cruising life.
Sat 23rd Feb.
Sunny periods, 32 degrees
We arrived in to Darwin cruise terminal at around 5pm. The heat and humidity is sweltering and we can see that across the bay a storm is gathering. We walk up some steps to the town centre and already Grahams T-shirt is wringing wet. We make it to the town centre just as the rain comes down in buckets with thunder and lightening. Sheltering from the rain in the epicentre of the city’s free wifi we catch up on emails, download photos onto the ipad etc. There is nothing else to do as all the shops are shut. Evidently a welcome committee had been planned but no-one informed them of our late arrival so they packed up, shut all the shops and went home or into the bars.
Darwin looks brand new and like all the northern cities we’ve visited has lots of building going on; roads, buildings, waterfront walks. Cyclone Tracy demolished most of the city in 1974. The cyclone caught everyone by surprise because there were warnings for a previous cyclone which never materialised. When Tracy came along people thought it was another false alarm, with the result that when it hit in the early hours of the morning 9,000 homes (admittedly low quality) were flattened with the loss of 60 lives. The waterfront is especially impressive with a sea water lagoon for safe swimming surrounded by bars and restaurants, childrens playgrounds and posh apartment blocks. These lagoons are common in North and Eastern Australia, as, although the sea looks very inviting you cannot swim in the sea. A combination of deadly box jellyfish, sharks and crocodiles makes the beach a no go area.
Moments later the Darwin Cathedral about to get a soaking
Sun 24th Feb
Sweltering again , 40 degrees
We gather at 06:45 for our all day excursion out to Lichfield Country Park with Off-Road Dreaming tours to see some countryside, fauna and swim in waterfalls. It’s already getting on for 30 deg and the sun is only just up. Along the main Stuart highway running for 60km or so are two water pipes. “These carry the drinking water from the Manton dam into Darwin. The water from the tap is never cold in Darwin” jokes Dave, our guide for the day. We drive for an hour and a half to a coffee stop at the park entrance and then another 20 mins into the park. The road (single carriageway now) continues for another 4,443kms to Alice Springs.
An interesting noticeboard not only contained useful information but amusing anecdotes such as...
Our first stop is at a series of particularly large termite mounds. We’ve seen numerous termite mounds from the minibus on the way but these are the largest. There are two types; magnetic and cathedral. Magnetic is a fancy word for thin mounds which are orientated North-South. No-one knows why but it is assumed, because these are situated in open countryside, that it is to minimise the heat from the sun. Cathedral mounds are any old shaped mounds and are created by termite colonies very very slowly, a centimetre or two a year. The mound shown in the picture below is 50 years old. The mound consists of workers, soldiers, a queen, and reproductive termites and is made from mud and excrement. Compare to the size of tourists!
Magnetic Termite Mounds
Our minibus contains a few Americans from the New Jersey area. It’s like listening to a load of Woody Allen characters arguing and discussing facts they have forgotten five seconds after being told by Dave, our guide. Dave says “so termites are blind and live underground. You’ll never see them because if they were to come to the surface they would die from the heat and light of the sun”. One of our Americans says “Oh my gaad - is that a termite?” pointing to an ant scurrying along the ground.
Our next stop is a waterfall which spills water gathered from a large (in square miles) sandstone table top down into the valley below. Dave points out different plant species on the way and their uses in the aboriginal world. This one for eating, that one for medicine. One thorny bush, called the firestarter was used to keep fire embers alight when they moved camp. A coal or other ember was wrapped in its leaves and used to start a fire at the new camp. The view over the valley across tropical rainforest is superb and goes on for miles (hundreds of miles actually). The walk of about 100 metres and back leaves our hats and shirts soaking and clamouring for the cool air conditioned bus. This is the format of the day; heat up outside, cool off in the bus.
Earlier we passed over a river made famous by one of its occupants, a 5m male crocodile called Sweetheart. Sweetheart took a dislike to outboard motors and attacked any boat which woke him up. The wildlife officials decided to move him for his and everyone else’s sake but botched the operation. Sweetheart lives on however as a stuffed exhibit in Darwin museum.
The Northern Territories have two seasons as against our four; wet season and dry. We’re now (Feb) in the wet season. In the dry season the ground is scorched brown with hardly any vegetation except trees. In the wet season it floods and is covered by spear grass. Spear grass is as it sounds - used for making lightweight spears which can float.
Another stop at Wangi Falls where we are not allowed to swim, Dave lays out lunch while we go for a walk. There are signs on how to be “croc safe” - do not venture near water basically.
The waterfall is picturesque but swimming is not allowed so we go for a walk to check out the views. There is a short 500m walk or a longer 1.7km one. Given the heat we go for the short one and come across a Golden Orb spider. This is the female and she is about 10cms including legs. She has a hareem of much smaller males (1cm) which she sometimes eats. The info board didn’t say whether she eats them because she’s hungry or there is another reason.
We catch up with the rest of the group and have a light lunch, then off to another waterfall where we can swim. It’s quite busy, probably because today is Sunday and hot and quite a few locals drive out to Lichfield for a picnic. We manage a swim in the cool waters but cut it short as a trade for a longer stop at the next one.
Our last stop, walkable, but we drive, is Florence Falls, for a walk and another swim. This time the pool is bigger and we have a longer swim in the pool. Graham swims right under the waterfall. The outfall of water makes it quite difficult to reach and once under the fall the force is too powerful to stay there. It’s not easy to stay afloat with a ton of water on your head.
A short walk passing more Orb spiders - they really were everywhere if you walk slowly and keep your eyes open - and we’re back in the cool of the bus and heading back to Darwin. Slowly the skies darken, the wind picks up and lightening flashes hit the ground ahead of us. Darwin is getting lashed again. The rain gets heavier the nearer we get, just like yesterday. A great day out with Dave pointing out different flora and fauna and their uses to the aborigines.
This is the last stop in Australia and it’s been really interesting. The distances are vast, and Darwin, a city of 1.5m people relies on huge road trains, and also a rail train from Adelaide for supplies. If the rail train is interrupted for weather etc Dave says the shops are soon short of fresh produce. On the way in we passed gas or oil platforms in the Timor Sea and can see lots of gas storage tanks across the bay. Another sea day tomorrow and then we will be in Indonesia.
So farewell from the Top End
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