Are We There Yet?

Perth

Having been to and reported on Perth in my posting of seven years ago (geez, time flies), I’ll limit my comments to a few highlights of this visit. We spent four nights in the Quay Perth hotel, in a room with a great view of the river and, while quite comfortable, oddly minimalist in its in-room amenities. For instance, there are no towel bars in the bathroom and only one peg (near the shower). We draped our wet towels over the bathtub.

While, for our stay, our view was great, the foundation of a building between the hotel and the riverfront is being prepared. I wonder how the hotel will fare when that new construction destroys the view.

For our first full day, we did a lot of wandering, visiting the original court house, now a museum, and exploring St. George’s Anglican cathedral. We returned to the cathedral later to listen to a concert.

The day after our return from Rottnest we toured the Bell Tower. As the elevator was out during our originally scheduled tour, we changed to a later one that included being on the level where the huge ANZAC bell played at noon. The bell was cast and installed in 2018 to commemorate the sacrifices and war dead of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps, which lost so many men during the Gallipoli campaign of WW I.

As part of the tour, we got to ring several of the famous Swan Bells, twelve of which are bells first cast in the 14th century and originally mounted in the belfry of St Martin in the Field in London. 

For having toured while the ANZAC bell was pealing, we were given medallions. We then went to the Perth Mint (which we had visited in 2018), where the medallions were engraved with our names, gratis. To get there and back while avoiding the arriving rain, we jumped on buses in both directions, without a clue as to what we were doing. (Within a limited area of downtown, bus rides are free, at least that is what we understood. Everyone before us mounting the bus “clocked” in, which made us nervous.) We just guessed where to get off. Sometimes you just have to be lucky.

That evening, the rain abated and we were able to walk the twenty minutes to an excellent restaurant, a recommendation of the McKennas, who patronized the place the night before. The ceviche was particularly good. In fact, all the restaurants we have been to in Perth have been excellent.

It’s Saturday as I write this and it’s steadily raining, our first adverse weather of the whole trip. We’re stuck in the hotel lobby for four and a half hours, waiting for our transport to the rail station. We tried taking a walk during a pause in the rain, but we had to scramble back to the hotel when the rain returned. I suppose we could have hired an uber to visit one more attraction but we’ve gotten lazy.

The rain is expected to be significant and lasting, a weather event called “training,” with a relentless series of showers. Oh, get us to the train.

We’ve made it to Perth, on the far west coast of Australia. This is our second visit, the first being in 2018, at the end of a trans-Pacific cruise and at the start of another two weeks visiting a bit more of Australia—including a week in Tasmania. But you’ll have to dive into the archives for pictures and notes from that visit.

I normally create postings in chronological sequence, but I’ll deviate from this a bit. We have four nights in Perth this visit, and in the middle of the stay we spent a full day on the island of Rottnest, 12 miles off the coast of the continent and 20 miles from Perth. It is now a vacation destination and beautiful nature reserve, 85% if it devoted to the later function. It was once the location of a notorious prison for aborigines found guilty of crimes under British law. Given it is the winter season, the crowds were reasonable. I would hate to come to the island at the height of the tourist season.

But first, the name: Rottnest. It means Rat’s Nest in Dutch, a name given by Willem de Vlamingh in 1696. This is because the island was and still is a major habitat for quokkas, who the Dutch thought must be huge rats. There are still 10,000 quokkas on the island, its only mammal. All larger animals died out 7,000 years ago when Rottnest became separated from the mainland with the post-ice age raising of the seas. It’s also been uninhabited since then, as the aborigines built no boats. (Yet, aboriginal lore accurately described whales off the coast that could only have been seen by ancestors viewing from the west/Indian Ocean side of the island.)

(Random aside: If Rott (or Rotte) means rat, does is Rotterdam mean Dam on the Rat River?)

The ferry ride to Rottnest first navigated from a pier near our hotel in Perth to the busy port of Fremantle. From there we crossed the 12 miles to Rottnest. The water was choppy, which we understand is typical.

The island is surrounded by a ring of reefs, once and still hazardous to navigation. Two lighthouses and other markers are in place to aid seafarers.

The island is all state owned and the few all-year residents are those who work the evening and night shifts for the island’s services. The rest of the employees commute from the mainland, on the same ferries we tourists use.

Besides being a beautiful nature reserve, there are over 100 species of birds that either reside on the island or use the island during migrations from as far away as Siberia and Alaska. A warm tropical current (the Leeuwin current) moves along the island from the northwest while a colder current comes from the south. This brings to the island a great mix of fish species and other sea creatures. 

As I alluded to above, an early use of the island was for a prison for aborigines. It opened in 1838. (The British arrived in 1829.) The first prison warden was particularly cruel and over 10% of the 3700 prisoners once incarcerated there died while in custody. When the prison closed in 1931, the structure was next used to house holidayers for eighty years. The complex is now closed and in the process of being restored as a museum to its original use.

During WW I and WW II, the island was used as an internment camp for Germans and Austrians (WW I) and then Italians (WW II) living in Australia. But for most of WW II Rottnest was a fortified bastion protecting Fremantle Harbor and its submarine base, the largest allied submarine base after Pearl Harbor.

The islands use as an internment camp didn’t completely disappear. From March to May 2020, the island was used to quarantine Australians and foreign visitors coming into the country. Why? COVID, of course. We were in Australia during March 2020, you may recall, and took one of the last flights out of the country to return to the U.S.

There is a small museum housed in one of the older island buildings that describes much of the history of the island. It is located near the oldest surviving building on the island, a small structure that is now a tiny Anglican church. 

We walked to one of the lighthouses, then on to the restaurant where we had lunch. The lunch of fish and chips was excellent, but Frances, against her wishes, shared part of hers. We had been warned about the seagulls, but they attacked her platter aggressively. You think I am the only one of us who loses one’s cool? You would have been surprised at the language Frances used after a gull snatched one of her fish. (We still had more than enough to eat.)

More welcome beggars were the quokkas, one of which looked up at me with pleading eyes. Alas, I was a heartless soul, so the quokkas moved on to more promising tables. So much for quokkas being shy, nocturnal animals. (With ten thousand of them on the island, a few had to develop abnormal behaviors.)

With the splendid reefs, Rottnest is a snorkelers’ and SCUBA divers’ paradise. However, the primary tourist activity on the island is cycling. Rottnest is a perfect place for exploring by bicycle.

It was a wonderful day with perfect weather. Rains are coming, but that is a problem for another day.

Next post I’ll return to our activities in Perth, a city that we enjoyed very much. 

Broome, the capital of Kimberley. Population, 17,000. That’s 42% of the total population of Kimberley, an area the size of California. Founded to support the pearling industry, Broome is now an active tourist destination. We’ll have but one night here before boarding a Virgin Australia flight to Perth.

We disembarked the Pursuit at 9:30 a.m. and boarded a cruise-provided bus to be delivered to our four-star rated luxury accommodation, the Continental Hotel. Four star? Google and TripAdvisor must have a sense of humor. We waited several hours before our room was ready. The delay clearly was from limited staff as the vast majority of rooms were, to our eyes, not in use.

And our room? A square, white walled minimally furnished accommodation, with a queen bed, a single stool-like chair and a cabinet for luggage and clothing. There were four hangers( which, in truth, was enough for a night). There was a patio door leading to a semi-private area with a table and two chairs. This was the “upgrade” we had requested.

OK, it was fine for one night and the bed was comfortable enough and the shower sufficient.

So, what to do for the rest of the day in Broome? Our decision was to walk the mile and a half to the Japanese cemetery, which we heard was worth a visit. It was, but we didn’t walk. As we exited the hotel a taxi was discharging its passengers. Five minutes and $8 later we were dropped at one end of the cemetery complex. We wandered through the Anglican,  Malay, Moslem and Catholic sections and, when we reached the far end, had fears we were trapped. But the gate there that looked to be locked, wasn’t, and we exited, turned right and found the Japanese Cemetery.

After that visit we walked the quarter mile to a shopping center for a light lunch. (Remember Woolworths and Kmart? They’re still around, at least in Broome). Even that short walk in the heat convinced us to flag down another taxi and head back to the hotel. That was the extent of our daytime exploration of Broome.

The McKennas visited the Broome Museum and quite enjoyed their visit. We’ll have to read Brian’s write-up to get the details.

That evening, the four of us patronized a Thai restaurant in what is called Chinatown. Maybe it once was an area where Chinese lived, but now it is an interesting stretch of shops and restaurants, laid out in small clusters of establishments. Our meal was absolutely delicious. (Pork Panang Curry and Shrimp Pad Thai for the curious.)

We had brought into the restaurant two bottles of wine we had saved from the cruise, a white and a red from American wineries. The red, a pinot noir, was sealed with a cork. The waitress had to look around for a cork screw—we had forgotten that almost all wines bottled in Australia, both red and white, have screw caps!

This is about all I can report about Broome. We did have an amusing incident at breakfast at the hotel. I had ordered two servings of granola at the counter. A man waiting for his coffee walked up to get it and tapped the credit card reader to pay for it. Only, it was my charge he tapped to pay. “No worries,” he grinned, “I’m on a business trip,” and refused to attempt a correction. (The cashier was relieved.) I paid for his coffee.

The Broome International Airport is wonderfully small and ours was the first flight out this morning. When we land in Perth, two hours and twenty minutes south, we’ll finally leave the warmth of the subtropics and begin experiencing an Australian winter.

It’s our last day on board the Seabourn Pursuit. We skipped this morning’s excursion to Hidden Island. Its sandy beach was certainly inviting to many and one last zodiac ride was tempting, but so was sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely latte. Actually, we were up early enough to watch the sun rise, albeit in our bathrobes.

Well, a frustrating electronic disaster just occurred. I had just complete the draft of my latest blog posting when I lost every word of it. After several desperate but unsuccessful attempts to recover some of it I received our travel-mate’s daily posting. Brian methodically produces a daily log, as opposed to my more cavalier timing. Reading his blog made me realize his was a better description of the day’s activities than was mine, I’ll simply use his write-up and hope he forgives me. I’ll use my own pictures. He has a better camera (it can’t be the photographer’s talent, of course) which I don’t want you to get used to. 😏

Brian’s write-up:

“Another good day yesterday.  We arrived at the Horizontal Falls right on time for the full flow of water from the upper pool to ours.  To call these falls is a bit of a misnomer but in fact at times there can be a very significant drop from the upper pool to where we were in the zodiac.  It can be about a 13’ drop at times and ours was about 5-6’. 

The falls are located in Talbot Bay and are a natural phenomenon where tidal currents create the illusion of waterfalls flowing horizontally.  This occurs due to the region’s large tides (up to 33’ difference) forcing massive amounts of water through narrow gorges in the McLarty Range.

With zodiacs we could only approach the falls and feel the force of the water and the whirlpools created by the current.  Which was plenty of fun and action.  There is a jetboat company that is quite an operation.  It actually goes through the falls and onto the next level of falls about a half mile away.  Then it shoots through the falls again on the way out.  It’s the Horizontal Falls Company out of Broome.  They fly you out of Broome in a seaplane, it lands at an artificial island where, for even more money, I’m sure, you can stay overnight and probably make several rides through the falls.

Just checked, it’s about $1000 for a half day adventure and over $2000 if you want to stay on their floating island overnight.  Not cheap so glad it was included in our cruise, even if we didn’t jet through the falls. 

After all that excitement of the falls, we then cruised through Cyclone Creek.  This was a beautiful cruise through canyons of rock that clearly demonstrated how active geologically the area is.  While on the King George River we saw rock formations that were strictly horizontal.  In this creek you could see how the rock uplifted and folded and just how massive amounts of rock and earth move over the thousands of millennia.  Our zodiac driver was Keith and he gave excellent talks on the geology and also on all the little critters one can so easily miss.  He’s a big fan of those mud skippers and, while we didn’t see any of them, he did point out several little crawly things and crabs along the shore.

He also explained why the creek got its name.  It’s a series of winding turns that go farther and farther into the canyon.  And thus it provides quite a good shelter for even large sailing vessels when there are cyclones.  Each time we came to a turn in the creek, we’d look forward and there would be another one. 

Later in the afternoon several of us in the higher suites got a very nice private visit to the bridge.  We got nice explanations of the equipment and how the ship navigates through the tidal channels and narrow passages.  The staff captain had a nice Irish accent and came from Cork.  He spends three months on a ship and three months at home.

For dinner we invited the Dallens to join us on our veranda as we sailed through the narrows and watched a beautiful sunset and then a clear star filled night sky.  An excellent end to a very good day.”

The largest inshore reef in the world is located off the Kimberly coast. It’s 154 square miles in size. Virtually all of it is submerged in high tide. When the tide recedes, lagoons and islets emerge, with water cascading down into the channels for hours, before the rising tide covers it all again. The tides rise and fall by forty feet. As fish struggle to get to the main waters during the ebbing tide, birds and sea creatures of prey are waiting. All this happens twice a day. The waters teem with wildlife. David Attenborough featured this reef in one of his many wildlife specials.

For our own trip, initially we enjoyed the tumbling waters flowing every hundred yards or so from the rising reefs. At first I thought there weren’t an exceptional number of birds to view—but then we turned our attention to the channel waters. Here we saw numerous turtles and many other aquatic animals. I at first tried to capture the sights on my iPhone, but eventually I gave up and enjoyed the show. We watched an eagle ray leap many feet out of the water, likely to evade a shark. We saw a nearby shark and a gigantic sea snake (and a smaller one). Turtles were so numerous that we stopped calling them out when spotted. We will have to wait until the end of the cruise to get access to the extraordinary photos the ship’s photographer has been taking.

Today’s excursion was a change of pace. We were given the opportunity to tour an outpost of the pearling industry. Pearling in the Kimberley began with the aborigines. The first Europeans arrived in the 1860’s to exploit the abundance of pearl oysters, the large-shelled pinctada, which produces large, high quality pearls. The locals tend to refer to the entire animal as a pearl. Hence, so will I unless my descriptions get confusing. (No comments about all my descriptions being confusing. 😁) It was not until the 1880’s that the industry became well established, centered on the town of Broome. Isolated Kuri Bay was and remains a particularly abundant site of pearls. However, until the late 1950’s, harvesting the animals produced only an occasional pearl (only one in a thousand). The primary product was the shell, commonly called mother of pearl. Mother of pearl was used for buttons, jewelry, inlays, and other ornamentation. At its peak, the Kimberley area, despite its remoteness and frequently hostile environment, accounted for 75% of the world’s pearling production.

In the early 1950s, the industry collapsed, due both to over-harvesting and by the introduction of plastic for buttons and other uses that displaced mother of pearl. Later that decade, the Japanese developed techniques for cultured pearls, which revitalized the industry. There have been ups and downs since, but with quotas on the number of pearls harvested and other improvements, pearling is back and thriving.

Our visit was to the Kuri Bay facility of the Paspaley Pearling Company, operating (with third generation ownership) since the 1930’s. There are about 40 personnel in Kuri Bay. Access is only by sea or seaplane. There are no others around, beyond perhaps a few aborigines. The few attempts at farming and ranching have failed due to the area's hostile environment (from poisonous and venomous plants and animals to cyclones). The wonderful weather we have enjoyed has hidden these extremes from us.

First, a reminder to myself: Never edit and post to the blog at 5:00 a.m. So, apologies for the miscues in the last post. I’ll try to keep my typos, misspellings and convoluted sentences under the civil engineer’s 5% acceptable error rate standard.

A Cruise for the Birds—and Turtles and Fish: Ashmore Reef

Two hundred miles off the northwest coast of Australia is an atoll of low-lying islands and coral reefs that, by shape and condition, would appear to be an artifact of long extinct and eroded volcanic origin. Rather, it is an uplifted shelf. No matter. Ashmore Reef contains several marginally vegetated islands, several purely sand islands, and an extensive complex of coral reefs. Today the reef is a marine park and nature preserve.  A large variety of birds nest on the islands or use it as a stopping point on their migrations. Only one cruise ship a day is allowed to visit.

A territory of Australia, Ashmore Reef’s proximity to Indonesia (100 miles) causes it to be a place of people trafficking and asylum seekers. Indonesian fishing boats also dot the area. For us, it was a destination for viewing birds, an occasional turtle and reef fish.

Getting to the reef from the Australian mainland involved ensuring all veranda lights were off and windows covered to prevent birds from crashing into the ship in the night. The next day, a booby did land on the deck just below our veranda, but it visited for just a few minutes before resuming its fight.

We opted out of snorkeling for the day, deciding on a zodiac ride around the reefs. The morning was perfect for both the snorkelers and sea-top viewers.

The zodiac ride was not our first event for the day. Both Frances and I indulged in early morning massages, as good a way to use up our shipboard credits as any. The massages were worth every penny. (Silly us, we went into the ship’s small shop with our credit in mind and saw some attractive tanzanite jewelry. Thinking a few small pieces would be good gifts, I inquired as to the price of a nice-looking broach. “Normally $8,000, but for you $4000,” was the reply. We smiled, bought a tube of sunscreen, and left.)

We were on the first zodiac to depart the ship for the reef area. There is a strict buoy-marked path from where the Pursuit was moored to our destination area. A nearby Australian coast guard ship enforces conformance to the rules of the visit.

We were greeted by boobys, frigate birds and sea turtles in route. While our focus was to be bird viewing, the water was so clear  and calm that we spent much of our time watching the coral reefs below. Our guide declared that this morning was the calmest and clearest (in looking down at the reef) she has ever experienced.

After returning to the ship, we had a busy afternoon, including a talk on sea turtles, the standard day’s summary and next day’s plan, a reception, and a dinner with the hotel manager. That humble title is deceiving. He is responsible for all operations involving passengers. Stefan is Austrian, but now lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He works two three-month shifts a year. A odd lifestyle, perhaps, but one with the benefit of six months off each year. 

Somewhere in between these activities we visited the bridge. Meanwhile, our perfect weather is morphing into something with a bit more wind and waves. Now I’ll have an excuse for my typos. 

Hunter River and Porosus Creek

Today’s zodiac excursion was a trip up Hunter River and its tributary, Porosus Creek. River and creek are misnomers, actually, as these, in reality, are inlets from the ocean. They are salt water from the ocean to where the upland rivers fall into the sea-level channels.

Porosus Creek is well known for the number of saltwater crocodiles what reside along its banks. We were not disappointed, although we were told the ones we saw were small. So were the unusual mudskipper fish, which skitter along the mudbanks, much of their time out of the water. They can grow up to a foot long, but the ones we saw were closer to two to three inches.

Jar Island and the Art of the Gwion Gwion

This morning’s excursion was one I know my sister Peggy would have truly enjoyed. Peggy is a great admirer of Native American pictographs and petroglyphs. The island of Jar was, a few thousand years ago, connected by land to the continent. The (now) island was a camping area for the indigenous people, including ancestors known as Gwion Gwion. (Until recently, this art was better known as Bradshaw art.) We visited two sites of art as old as 12,000 ago, as well as a burial site we were forbidden to photograph. (It is a rough pile of rocks.)

This was our first “wet landing,” where we exited the zodiacs into ankle-deep water (for just a step or two) along the beach. The art sites were a few hundred feet inland, located under overhangs and shallow caves, which protected them through the ages. Most of the remaining art is iron-based, red wine-hued pigments, which absorbed into the sandstone. Other colors, such as those based on charcoal are mostly gone except in well-protected environments.

The art is characterized by depictions of slender humans adorned with headdresses, tassels and sashes. There are also animals displayed. An internet search will produce spectacular photographs of the art, but I’ve included several of my own snapshots. Our visit was to only two of thousands of such sites.