Our only purpose in visiting Adelaide really was to catch a plane from there to Kangaroo Island, just a twenty minute flight away. We stayed one night before and one after our island visit but it was enough. It’s a smallish city whose most remarkable physical features are its uncommonly wide boulevards and a summer in which, so the locals will tell you, it gets hot enough to suck the air out of your lungs. […]
Back in Adelaide, Kitty departed for home in Florida partly due to some prior commitments and partly to give Grant and me some buddy time together. After a three and a half hour flight from Adelaide to the Red Center of Australia, Grant and I landed nearly dead center in the continent of Australia at Yulara, […]
Grant and I, having had quite enough of large red piles of rocks, flew three hours to the northeast coastal town of Cairns, where we were met by a driver who whisked us along a scenic coastal highway forty-five minutes north to the touristy but pleasant town of Port Douglas. […]
Upon leaving the Port Douglas/Cairns area, we flew to Brisbane and drove out to its Marine Industry Park where Grant for the first time met the crew and toured Indigo in the refit shed. Later that evening, we all rendezvoused at a restaurant on the lively Southbank where the crew and I had a wonderful reunion […]
To catch our flight back to Florida, Grant and I returned to Sydney where our travels began a month before. We had a few days to waste so I walked around the CBD some more, visited some places I had missed and generally goofed off. Grant, however, was bent on a mission that he had secretly begun when we were here last and now was determined to complete. […]
Grant and I returned home to Florida at the end of July, and I remained there awaiting completion of the refit, tending to a few business matters and catching up with old friends and the family. As the refit work neared completion, I became anxious to get moving again and so returned to Australia on September 5, a good bit prematurely as it turned out.
I arrived back in Brisbane on September 5 and drove directly to the Hotel Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast not knowing at the time that it would be my home for the next forty-seven days. As a longer stay customer during a slow season I managed to get a reduced room rate and get upgraded to their Imperial Suite, really a three room luxury apartment with kitchen. […]
On November 1, following the end of Indy week, we departed the GC through the Southport inlet. Elisa, our new stewardess, and Scotty, a temporary engineer, both Aussies, were on board along with the rest of the crew and yours truly. Winds projected at fifteen knots instead reached a blustery forty and were, along with the attendant seas, coming at us directly […]
Cairns is a mostly tourist driven small town though the largest along Queensland’s northeast coast. Its marina, one of the finest we have encountered since leaving the US, is within a short walk of the town center, and dock side facilities include many open air restaurants and bars. As if to underscore the dangers of its sea shore, […]
As we leave the civilized waters of Australia making for the wilds of Indonesia, thoughts turn easily and naturally to piracy. Brigands of the sea have long worked the waters of the Banda, Flores and especially the Java Sea, though their techniques rise only to the level of the smash and grab and their armaments to the machete. These are not generally the equivalent of those bad guys in Somalia. […]