Tag Archives: Cruise

Macquarie Harbour and Gordon River Huon Cry

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Monday 9 September 2024 – There being no rest for the wicked, we had to get up early so that we could join the planned activity for the day, billed as a “journey of blissful serenity” – a cruise down the Gordon River, for which we had to check in at 0800, having had breakfast, driven the short distance to the Gordon River Cruise Terminal and had a n argument discussion about where to park the car.

Breakfast was worth a mention for the unique teapot they served our tea in.

We were solemnly told to leave it lying down for the four minutes measured by the egg timer before serving the tea. Once upright, the pot proved to be conventional in that, like hotel teapots everywhere, it dribbled when we tried to pour the tea.

Gordon River cruises are obviously A Thing, since the size of the cruise terminal

is pretty substantial, given the small size of the town it’s in.  The boat we were to cruise in was no dinghy, either.

We had tickets on the (premium, naturally, dahling) upper deck. To my surprise, there was assigned seating, and we actually got seats right at the front of the cabin,

not, as you might have inferred from the picture above, that this was necessarily going to guarantee us a good view of things.

The weather was very changeable during the whole day; we had drizzle, rain and bucketing rain, wind and (occasionally) sunshine; and it was quite cold, about 6°C; so “blissful serenity” looked to be a bit of a long shot, frankly. Still, the boat was reasonably warm, we had a light breakfast available to supplement the reasonably dense one we’d had before checking out, and the coffee was decent.

If you look at the location of Strahan on the map

you can see that it’s at the top of Macquarie Harbour, with the mouth of the Gordon River at the bottom.  But rather than go straight on after leaving Strahan, Captain Rick turned his boat hard to starboard, and our guide, Emily, explained that we would be exploring Macquarie Harbour before the blissful serenity bit along the river.

The harbour is actually the second largest in Australia, after Port Philip Bay, the harbour at the top of which one finds Melbourne. Emily pointed out to any Sydney residents on the cruise that Macquarie Harbour was six times the size of theirs. (Her commentary was very good – informative, interesting and, occasionally, amusing.)

The boat headed towards Macquarie Heads, the harbour entrance, because it’s of interest from several angles. Examination of the map will show that it’s not wide and, in its day, was called “Hell’s Gate” because it was so tricky and dangerous to navigate.  It’s just 83 metres wide,

and the original channel through which colonial vessels could sail was very close to one of the sides; wind could blow the ship on to rocks, which caused a lot of paperwork, even in those days. So a British Civil engineer, Sir John Coode, calculated, by constructing a model of the harbour, that building an underwater wall along one side would channel faster movement of water, dredging the gap and making the shipping channel wider and deeper. The wall was built in two stages (by convicts, natch): a training wall of rocks sufficiently small that they could be handled by people, who simply dropped them overboard into place,

followed by the real thing, with very substantial rocks that needed steam engines to handle them.

This wall once had a railway along its top, to ease the distribution of rocks along its length. As you can see, that railway is no longer in use.

We exited the harbour,

and then turned round and re-entered it, to give some idea of how it must have looked to the captains of those early vessels.

 

In the harbour, we noted long streams of foam in the harbour waters.

These come about because of the nature of the harbour’s waters, which have a layer of fresh water, whose source is mainly the Gordon River, on top of sea water.  The fresh water froths up more easily than sea water; the bubbles tend to clump together because of surface tension  and the wind drives them into these striking lines.  The water itself is quite brown

partly from sand being churned up by the currents, and partly from tannins leaching from the forests that border the harbour.

As we headed towards the Gordon River, we passed an enormous fish farming operation, farming mainly Atlantic salmon and sea trout. Three companies operate these farms, and they seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon at one point.

Emily gave us a lot of information about the efforts made to keep these farms environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable. Given the horrors of fish farming in Canada and Scotland, one wonders if there’s an element of PR in this messaging. Anyway, the farms are extensive, and managed in quite a sophisticated way, with some feeding being done by ships dispensing food according to computer programming.

Tasmania has a significant place in history as a place where hardened convicts were transported in the 19th century, and Macquarie Harbour has a pair of neighbouring islands within it that were particularly notorious – Sarah Island

and the much smaller Grummett Rock.

Between them, these formed the notorious Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, which was in operation between 1822 and 1833. Sarah Island is about 20 acres (8 hectares) and up to 500 convicts – repeat offenders – would have been imprisoned there at a time. Under normal circumstances, our boat would have called in to Sarah Island so that we could look around it ourselves; but recent storm weather (basically the same as that which delayed our escape from Kangaroo Island) had wrought such damage on the landing location that it was unusable. Emily described the regimen on the Island, which was exceptionally harsh and violent – a special version of the cat o’ nine tails was apparently used for lashing the convicts who were sent there. The female convicts imprisoned there were originally sent over to Grummett Rock overnight to sleep in a cave, thus keeping them away from the male convicts at night time. Very enlightened of the authorities, I’m sure.

Shortly after passing between these two islands, we entered the Gordon River, and the skipper turned off his diesels and put the boat on electric power (“whisper mode”) so that we could cruise slowly and more or less silently along, with minimum disturbance from any wash from the boat – blissful serenity, in fact. Both banks of the river are heavily forested with a variety of eucalypts predominating.

East Bank
West Bank

The boat wound its way basically south along the river

past some splendid scenery.

One thing that the skipper steered us towards, and which Emily specifically called out, was a Huon Pine

an example of a very valuable and once much-exploited tree, to which a lot of attention is paid in this area. (As any fule kno, it’s actually a podocarp, not a true pine, of coure.) The wood from a Huon Pine is very heavily laden with oil, which makes it excellent for shipbuilding – it takes nails well and the oil prevents it from rotting.  (As The Wall in the Wilderness shows, it is also excellent for carving). There was once a thriving industry in “pining” – extracting Huon Pine along the river. The tree, however, is very slow-growing, so the industry was ultimately unsustainable and it is now illegal to cut down a living tree. This riverside specimen survived because it was too gnarly to be useful as timber.

By this stage, the forests surrounding the river had changed to being rainforest, and the boat stopped at the Heritage Landing

so that we could take a gentle stroll in this rainforest environment.  The stroll was along a prepared boardwalk

which led, past some very rainforesty surroundings,

to a halfway point, where more Huon Pines grew.

A guide, Erin, was there to explain about the trees in more detail, and there was quite a lot of it available. Long story short, the pines above had all arisen by natural vegetative reproduction from the root system of a very old “mother” tree, which had sadly now fallen. It is estimated that it was over two thousand years old.

In fact all the trees were male… these had survived “pining” simply because they were in very dense forest with no easy route to the river to get the timber out.

There was considerable scope for a philosophical discussion about actually how many trees there were there – one or many? and how old that made it/them. Fortunately, the skipper sounded his horn, which was the signal for us to get back on board and we headed back along the river and back to Strahan.

By this stage it was nearing 2pm, and we had to get to our next accommodation, which was near the Cradle Mountain National Park.  So we refuelled the car and headed off, into the wet (it was still raining).

The road was similar to what we’d seen on our drive over from Hobart – twisty and misty

with some spectacular scenery at times (when one could see it)

and the occasional arboreal sword of Damocles awaiting to alarm the unwary.

Differently, though, this road was hedged by huge amounts of gorse.

Another, and less welcome development, was the appearance of potholes. The lass at Avis back in Hobart had mentioned these, and it seemed that the road to Cradle Mountain attracted a lot of heavy lorries, which in turn created the craters which required the driver to be alert at all times.

Here are a few of the landscapes we passed as we drove the 130-odd kilometres towards Cradle Mountain.

Cradle Mountain is a national park which is known for its wildlife, as can be seen from road signs as we approached our destination for the day.

So we slowed down, and watched out, and eventually reached Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge, just a little past the Cradle Mountain National Park Visitor Centre.

There was a certain cognitive dissonance between our reception, which was cordial but gave the impression of a place that was somewhat quiet and low-key, and our accommodation, which was a cabin to which we drove around a lake. Our cabin is excellent – large, luxurious, warm and well-organised; some cheese, meats and crackers had been thoughtfully laid in the room for us and there was Early Grey tea, milk, a kettle and a teapot. We even found a wallaby near the front door as a taster for the wildlife we hope to see over the coming days

and a pied currawong came to our balcony to check us out.

If you look closely at the bird, you can see he’s puffed out against the cold, and he’s very wet.  That’s because it was raining really quite hard by this stage

and so we decided to give the hot tub a miss and just enjoy our lovely cabin.

We’re here for a couple of nights, and have nothing organised for the morrow until the late afternoon. Given the cold and wet we’ve experienced so far, the temptation might be just to curl up in the warmth of our cabin and ignore the world for a while; but we’ll see what the weather looks like in case we feel like being more energetic.  You’ll be able to see whether we stayed in or went out if you come back to these pages in due course.

 

 

 

 

Moving on from Broome

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Monday 12 August 2024 – The time has come to leave Broome, which was actually just a staging post (albeit one not without interest) to the next major segment of our trip, which is a cruise. For ten days, we will be the guests of APT cruises on Le Laperouse as we explore the Kimberley coast, sailing from Broome to Darwin.

As is normal for these things, the cruise didn’t depart until the afternoon, but the hotel checkout time was 10am, so we’ve had a decent amount of the day in Broome to amuse ourselves. I popped to the nearest ATM to get a few more Australian dollars, which gave me an opportunity to see how a church is done in the cyclone-proof architectural style of the region.

This is the Broome Anglican Church; notice that the bell tower is (a) skeletal, so that wind blows through it rather than at it and (b) further reinforced with guy ropes (or more likely cables).

We had a fair bit of time in our favourite location at the Mangrove hotel, which is on the deck overlooking the mangroves and the water, and keeping an eye out for bird life.  Our Rainbow Bee Eater was, as ever, tirelessly plucking insects out of the air in missions from its normal base station, and I managed to harness my brand-new Nikon Z6iii to get some images of it in flight, which I was quite pleased with.

Also, the bird which we had originally thought was an Osprey came by again. It perched a way away beside another, and it looks like they may have had a barney, as one flew off in a marked manner.

One or other of these then flew somewhat nearer, making it worth getting a couple of shots.

It was then clear that it wasn’t an Osprey, but a Brahminy Kite, also known as the Red-backed Sea Eagle.

All this ornithologising, and a spot of lunch, took us to 2pm, when we needed to join the process of getting on to the boat.  The Mangrove hotel was being used as the gathering point, so all the (160-odd) passengers assembled in an upstairs room in the hotel, where the cruise staff were waiting to process us.

The processing was slightly complex, because everyone had to provide a completed health declaration and passports, collect a lanyard with their cabin key attached to it, and be allocated a bus to join to get to the port.

It was done this slightly labyrinthine way in order that people didn’t have to stand about in the direct sunshine at the port, where there is no shade. It all worked reasonably well, and we shuffled on board around 4pm – to find Jane’s case safely in our cabin but no sign of mine.

Bugger.

Luckily our cabin girl, Verona, popped in to introduce herself; she went off on an ultimately successful mission to find it (delivered to cabin 527 rather than 524 due to sloppy labelling) which left us with just enough time to get largely unpacked before we went for the welcome briefing, with the captain and the cruise director, Margie,

who introduced us to other key people, in charge (right to left) of the spa, the shop, the cruise videos and photos and the wine.

There was, of course, the mandatory life jacket practice,

and then we departed as the sun set,

with drinks

and live music.

This is an expedition cruise, similar in principle to (but far removed, I suspect, in practice from) our Antarctic cruise. The boats have pretty much the same passenger capacity, but there is a little more emphasis on luxury on Le Laperouse: there’s a lift between levels; the boat features a spa, a fitness room and a shop; and drinks are by and large at no extra cost unless you’re after some ritzy cocktail or wine. However, the idea for both is the same: to get people off the boat on Zodiacs to explore the area as we go along. The weather here will be somewhat different, of course; wind was the enemy in Antarctica, whereas we’ll have to be cognisant of the power of the sun on this cruise. Looking at the assembled passengers, I also wonder whether some of them will struggle to get on and off Zodiacs; but maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. Time will tell.

For now, the G&Ts are available at no extra charge and there is Earl Grey Tea and a kettle in our cabin, so, as we leave Broome behind us,

I think we can look forward to 10 days of getting educated about the Kimberley coast while being looked after very well.

Nearly There…final preparations!

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Thursday 22 February 2024 – We headed for bed having crossed the Circumpolar Current which delineates the Antarctic Ocean and provides the cut-off mechanism which effectively isolates it from other oceans it touches. This normally means a change in the weather – usually colder and often foggier. For us, not so much.

We really have been sensationally lucky with the weather enabling a calm crossing of the Drake Passage.  (Mind you, we have to head north again on the return journey, so the weather gods probably haven’t finished toying with us yet.)

We’re nearly there…

The food selection for breakfast was a little less to my liking than yesterday’s – frankfurter and hard-boiled rather than bacon and scrambled – but I did make one discovery that brought Oceanwide Adventures even closer to my heart.

We were promised a busy day, full of lectures and final preparations for actually leaving the boat at some stage, maybe even tomorrow. And so it proved.

The lecture programme started with a very engaging presentation from Sasha, a Russian Antarctic Scientist, who provided us with the first actual joke in all the lectures we’ve had so far.

He pointed out many arcane facts about Antarctica, which is, of course, a continent – but you knew that, didn’t you?:

  • At over 13 million square kilometres, it’s not the smallest continent. You can fit Australia or North America within Antarctica’s land mass
  • Its ice sheet contains 70% of the world’s fresh water, is up to 4km thick and is so heavy that it distorts the earth’s crust
  • If you were to remove the ice, before the crust sprang back into shape (at a sort of geological pace), this is what the continent would actually look like:

Yes, the Antarctic Peninsula (top left above) would be an island!

Sacha’s joke was based on comparing Antarctica and Russia. Antarctica is nearly 14 million square kilometres in area; Russia is just over 15 million square kilometres.  Antarctica is cold, 99% covered in ice. Russia is cold, 65% covered in permafrost.  Antarctica has Emperor Penguins. “And Russia”, he said, deadpan, “used to have an Emperor”.

The other lecture, from Ursula, a Swiss scientist, covered Pinnipeds.  She talked about five varieties in the Antarctic region, many of them concentrated around South Georgia.  There are true ones, there are eared ones, there are toothed ones. There are some which walk, some which can only waddle. They are seals – fur, leopard, Weddell, elephant and crabeater.

Humans are much more interested these days in conserving the various seal species than they used to be; fur seals, for example, were once hunted to near extinction because of the effectiveness of their pelts as warm clothing. The population has since recovered nicely and is thriving. This is not so much from human conservation, as from human predation on another species, principally the blue whale. Because of the effectiveness of human whaling, the  number of whales around to eat the krill that is such a key element in the food chain of the local fauna plummeted, thus leaving more krill for the fur seals, enabling the population to recover quickly. Unintended consequences litter the world of human hunting and conservation.

The preparations bit of the day was quite intense, mainly because there was quite a lot of it to be done and it had to be done to for any passenger who wanted to leave the boat on an expedition, i.e. all 170 of us.

Firstly, we all had to collect waterproof boots, which had been referred to as muck boots and which were a non-negotiable piece of clothing for any Zodiac-based landing.  Having collected ours, we discovered why they’re called muck boots.

The next, and particularly chaotic, process was the Biosecurity Session, to get all of our outerwear inspected, cleaned and disinfected, to ensure we don’t carry unwanted life forms to, from or between Antarctic locations.  So we carried our coats, waterproof trousers, backpacks, poles, gloves, hats, scarves, lifejackets, and boots down the four flights of stairs to a scene of barely controlled pandemonium.

The expedition staff were really earning their keep, dashing from one person to the next and helping them check their gear over – little bits of grit stuck in boot treads, fragments of seed caught in Velcro, splashes of mud anywhere, all had to be cleaned up and anything that would contact the ground, meaning boots and poles, disinfected.  It might have been somewhat chaotic, but it was done with charm and energy and we were soon checked over, signed off and free to lug our stuff back up the four flights of stairs to our cabin.

Evidence that we’re getting closer to the Antarctic landmass came in the form of sighting of the first iceberg.

The wonderful visibility that enabled us to see the iceberg at such a distance didn’t last. We suddenly found ourselves fogged in.  It looked very dense fog from our cabin window, but I thought I saw a fogbow forming so popped up to the top deck.

I wondered at the time whether the fog had come about because we were now near the South Shetland Islands (we had been told earlier that we might be able to see them as we went by). It turns out that our proximity to the islands was through a change of course which, in turn, had been necessitated by the need for a medical evacuation of a passenger.  Pippa gathered everyone together to brief us: the Plan B we’d been on was to become a Plan C whilst we took the boat close to where there was an airstrip via which the evacuation could take place – King George Island.

In a relative way, we were lucky – particularly the passenger who had to be evacuated – because the calm weather and our consequent good progress meant that we could likely combine the diverted route and evacuation procedure with an expedition to somewhere on the South Shetlands before heading south of the Antarctic Circle. The Plan B itinerary had had these components in the reverse order.

This was the plan, then, as we went into Dinner. During dinner, our slightly eccentric dining pattern drew the attention of Aleks, the restaurant manager, and Marvin, the senior steward, who are beginning to get used to the two odd English people who never have a main course at dinner.  The food on the boat is great, but, as with all cruises, there’s too much of it; also, we don’t like taking on a big dinner – at home we typically have just two meals a day.  So we have been having just a soup and starter.  Of course, the ship’s restaurant is geared up to whizzing out 170 full meals as efficiently as possible, and they do it very well – hordes of waiters scurrying back and forth dispensing plates of food with good cheer. The odd couple who don’t want one of the courses is thus a bit non-standard; but they’re beginning to cotton on, bless them.

Before dinner, Pippa had emphasised that the auguries for Plan C were good, but that, of course, we were still dependent upon the weather gods, and the times of the critical flight into and out of King George Island.

Which changed at least once, in what is clearly becoming very much business as usual for expedition-style trips such as this one.  Pippa’s original Plan C – let’s call it plan C1 – had involved everyone going out on a Zodiac cruise (i.e. no landings) tomorrow morning.  As we were dining, Plan C2 was announced, meaning that there would after all be a split expedition – one set of people going out for a landing, the other on a Zodiac cruise, with the two groups swapping over during the expedition timeslot. That’s the plan as we head to bed.

Let’s see if Plan C2 prevails, or whether a C3, or even C4, is needed.