Mareeba, Queensland, AustraliaMareeba- Cairns and Papua New Guinea
cruise 24 August to September 2 2017
We stayed for a few days at Mareeba
country Caravan park so we could leave the van and car in safety . We
found out that there is another couple in the park also going on the
cruise , they stay here for half the year and work on the avocado and
mango farms . We did not see much of them on the ship.
They are not taking their car into
Cairns either , their friends are taking them the day before. We on
the other hand are to take a taxi into Mareeba to the bus depot and
then the bus to Cairns the day of the cruise start. Bus ticket is
only $9.80 each way per person for age pensioners, not bad for around
90klm. The bus goes from Atherton to Mareeba and then across the
mountain into Cairns. Our trip will take just over an hour into
Cairns then we will walk with cases 5 blocks to the wharf.
As long as there are no accidents or
stoppages on the mountain we should have plenty of time , there are 3
buses aday during the week -early morning , mid-day and late
afternoon. Well all goes well and we even got a lift from the owner
of the caravan park into bus terminal, we got to the boat before our
allotted time {1.30pm} and did not have to wait long before we were
allowed onboard.
Our room is the last at the back of
deck 6 next to the door to the outside walk. We could not get a
balcony room but have a window to the walk and back of the ship.
The room is no different from Carnival
rooms , bed ,2 closets small desk top with television and small
couch. While waiting for cases we go to deck 11 for late lunch. Its
not quite buffet up there as staff serve you you do not help yourself
and there is glass protecting the food. We will not eat here often we
will go to restaurants. Our cases arrive within the hour and we
unpack . We go outside onto deck walk to watch us leave Cairns then
we have life boat drill.
Get life jackets from cupboard and go to our
allotted stations. Ours is not far outside our room on the deck walk
ready for lifeboat 12. Put on life jackets after being shown how to ,
staff check you and then you can leave.
Then its of to find out about our shore
trips we had booked and sort out our restaurant seating and meals.
We had booked a couple of island things
but could not pre-book the big snorkelling trip with cave tour at our
first island of Alotau. We were on the list , when we got to the
tour desk we find they were only taking 38 and the rest of us are
standbys. You can guess I was not pleased this was one of the things
we definitely wanted to do at this island. We had to take our second
choice of 2 out laying village tours learning what they eat and how
they grow things and make baskets and their life in general.
The snorkel special was a 9 hour trip.
It took you to the resort side and out on a boat to a deep drop off
they call sponge haven. Lots of sponges fish and marine life living
in caves in the wall of the drop off. Lunch at the resort and tour of
skull caves-would have been good. We find out it costs $2,000 per
person per week to stay at the resort.
So after sorting out the rest of our
trip shore things we sort out restaurant bookings and my menu.
Then we walk the deck around the ship
check where things are . We have a day at sea to go to trivia games,
origami lesson and go to music shows and comedian shows.
We arrive at our first island about 7am
to the people singing and dancing a greeting.
They put a small child
dressed in native dress and with painted face out in front with a
basket for donations. This happens everywhere we go the children do
not go to school the day the ship is there and they put on dances and
sing to get donations for their schools. There are also markets
everywhere we go of their crafts. Some of the wood carvings and
shell stuff can not be brought into Australia some is allowed with
fumigation at your expense. We looked at some of the materials and
found they buy the material and sew them into shirts and dresses they
all ware. They do not print their own patterns .
The island of Alotau is in Milne bay
where Japan was defeated on sept 4 in WW11 at the Battle of Milne
Bay.
The villages we visited of Dodobana a
little inland and Gehi Gehi on coast where once cannibal people.
In these villages the woman owns the
land and if a man marries he joins his wife on her land or her
mothers land . So the chief who greats us with his mother does not
own their land his mother does.
We learn how they grow and cook in clay
pots -taro,sweet potato, cassava, yam , banana, green leafy
vegetables and herbs and spice, and of course coconut. Every thing
cut put in clay pot over fire and then flavoured with scraped coconut
flesh it was good.
The mother then shows us how to make
baskets from coconut palm leaves.
The people then put on a dance and our
dressed in traditional coconut leaf grass skirts and bird feathers,
we do not see any birds other than welcome sparrows and starlings .
Most these islands have a year round
temperature of daytime 25-35.
Back on board the ship by 1pm and we
were going to have lunch then go back ashore. This did not happen as
we found there was no close we could go snorkelling , we had to be
on the tour we thought we were to be on - not pleased.
More trivia games and walking then
dinner and show. We are given a table in the main restaurant we can
have each night so we have the same staff as this makes it easier for
them to feed me . These are our waitress who sorts out my meals , her
husband and another waiter who looked after us. Remely- waitress is
in charge this section . Her and her husband Ferdinand are from
different parts of the Philippines . They got together on board ship
and have been together 5 years. Padan who gets most of our drinks
married last year and they are expecting a baby in January. The staff
work 8 months then have 3 months off and they work everyday of that 8
months. Which can be split into early morning couple hours off then
work lunch couple hours off then work dinner, some days they only
work 2 shifts and have more hours off during the day. It also means
Padan who married last time home will not see his wife until January
when his baby is due. Hard life but is a way of making money for them
as they support they families back home and Remiely and Ferdinand
have built new houses for their mums.
Our next island is Kitava.
Population of 3,000 and life here
remains untouched with little outside influence. Remains the same as
thousands of years ago and scientists claim that the diet here ,which
has not changed from the original inhabitants, is the healthiest on
the planet and consists of root vegetables, tropical fruit, fish and
coconuts.
There was to be 2 culture performances
and a trip to a little island of Nuratu which is only 300 metres
away. We can not swim there as there are very strong currents.
Well we see none of this as we can not
get to anchor offshore like we supposed to as the weather is too bad.
It is unsafe to anchor and lower tender boats to get us ashore.
Another disappointment so our time is
spent walking the deck, going to shows, trivia and sudoko.
The ship now instead of going full out
all night can go slowly for the day and night to Rabaul.
Rabaul -- 28 august Monday
This is on the north eastern tip of
Papua New Guinea with its capital of New Britain which has been
destroyed by volcano eruptions in 1937 and 1994. It was also
flattened by arial bombardment in World war 11. It has kilometres of
underground tunnels built by the Japanese during their occupation in
WW11. Well by slave labour of captured Australian and Indian troops
and indigenous prisoners of war. Large barge tunnels for bringing
munitions a shore these connect to stores and tunnels where prisoner
of war men were kept.
The whole bay is made of the centre of
a collapsed volcano centre of thousands of years ago. There is now 3
main volcanoes around the rim.
Mt Tavurvur is one of the most active
volcanoes in the south Pacific. In 1994 it erupted and covered Rabaul
in volcanic ash. The town was rapidly relocated 20 kilometres away in
Koopo. This is the commercial centre since but 2000 people have moved
back to Rabaul and are still digging out the town. We get to go to
the base of the volcano and see the “bubbling beach”a volcano
vent that sends out boiling , yes boiling water. You can feel the
heat as you get close. It drains into the sea. There is still ash
over most things and some plants have struggled through to grow.
We then go to the Volcano-logical
observatory set up to sturdy and monitor the 3 volcanoes that are all
active. While we are there one of the seismographs shows an
earthquake in the area. You would have seen on TV. News. The last
volcanic eruption in 1994 started with an earthquake that flattened
the buildings before they were covered with ash. Our guide was at
high school when it happened and she said the older people new enough
to get every body to high ground away from the side of the volcano
and only a few lost there life.
Tuesday 29 august
Our next island was Kiriwina island pop
12,000
Women have still higher status then men
and pigs are a sign of wealth. A strange game of cricket is played
here which can go on for days and can have any number of players as
long as there is the same on each team. The players can break out
into song and dance and it is used to settle inter-tribal warfare and
as mating ritual.
There is also what is known as the Kula
ring in these islands in which several priceless shell trinkets have
been circulating for hundreds of years , keeping trust between the
different villages and islands.
The ship anchors off shore and we
tender across. We snorkel for a couple of hours go back to ship for
lunch and go back again walk around and snorkel some more. We did not
want to eat what they had at the market stalls. On the walk I found
two butterflies and a skink thats all.
More trouble when they tried to raise
the anchor it had got twisted and stuck in very deep coral. We were
to up anchor at 4.30pm but it was after 6pm when they finally shook
it loose after a lot of backward and forwards and side to side
movement of the ship.
They say it happens sometimes on deep
anchorage but costs a lot of money if they have to send the divers
down to cut the chain. Then a salvage team has to come in and get the
anchor as it can not stay there because of conservation concerns plus
its a lot of money to leave down there.
Its wed 30 august. Conflict Islands
The one we are going to is a privately
owned island of Panasesa.
Its 11 degrees from the equator. It is
a coral atoll 152 km off the tip of mainland PNG. Panasesa has a
deep channel through the outer reef system which allows the ship to
anchor in a lagoon. There are no residents here.
We are supposed to go for a walk inland
with a guide here looking for wildlife. Once again P&O have
stuffed up and did not tell us are guide did not turn up at the last
port. This walk I was really looking forward to, this is part of why
we are on the cruise to see some of the wild life.
As we approach the island the sea is
too rough to anchor so we have to go around the other side . Here
they have just last week put in a floating pontoon. We can not put
the anchor down as it is too deep here so crew have to keep us in
place using thrusters all day so we can off load onto the tender
boats to get to the pontoon. This made it a bit harder getting on the
tender boat but we had snorkelling to do.
This is the side of the island where
the deep water and best snorkelling is and where is set up a pontoon
to get in and out of the water. So we got off the ship onto tender
boat got taken to new floating pontoon on the island to wait for a
few small boats to take us out to snorkelling pontoon. The
snorkelling is good but we feel a bit cheated as you can swim out
here through the channel saving $129 each . So we stay out here for
longer than they wanted to let us, because it was a little late for
lunch we tried some island food but had to buy vouchers to pay
islanders. I had very oily sweet potato chips , Larry a sort of pie
both were not eaten so back to ship for late lunch. After lunch we
went ashore again , walked around the market set up by some island
people then went snorkelling again on the other side of the floating
pontoon.
At least it proved to be a good sunny
day in the end and the snorkelling was very good.
Thursday morning we reach our last
island of Doini.
Population 100 and this island is
privately owned with a small sort of resort.
This island was used by the close by
islands as a burial island before being privately owned and still has
skull caves which we did not find.
No transport on this 1,000 hectare
island you walk . Temperature of year round day time of 25-30
degrees.
We arrived about 7am to anchor of shore
and tender boat ashore. It is the only morning we slept in , all that
snorkelling, the lowering of the anchor woke us.
Quick breakfast and we go ashore and
walk around . The Locals have a market and a white guy is selling
pearls- he has a pearl farm on a nearby island. The cheapest single
pearl was $50. There were dance displays by local kids trying to get
donations for their schools. An Electus parrot on a perch you could
take photos of for $2. Then we found what we think is a Goodfellow's
tree kangaroo in a cage, they are only found in PNG and this is one
of the things we wanted to see, but not like this in a bare cage.
We went back to ship for lunch then
back to the island with snorkel gear for a couple of hours.
We were very tired from a lot of
snorkelling and a late night the night before. The crew put on a
talent show, but it did not start until nearly 10pm. Most of the crew
who were in the show were good but the last girl, a room cleaner, a
little very shy young lady sang Whitney Huston song 'I will always
love you ' and she had every body standing and clapping . She out
sang Whitney.
Friday is spent travelling to Cairns
and Larry has an infection like a cold then I start feeling sick
too. So when we reach Cairns we decide to pay the $180 to get a taxi
all the way back to Mareeba and the Caravan park, instead of walk,
bus and taxi . Cheaper but we have no energy left and do not feel
like waiting 4 hours for the bus as its Saturday and there is no
midday bus.
I know it sounds like I did not enjoy
cruise but I did just not happy with P&O. Most the crew were good
especially our restaurant crew and cabin crew.
Sorry for any spelling or grammar
mistakes but I need to get this done as we my not have reception in
next few days.
2025-05-22