Day Thirty Eight: Up the Creak

No it is not a mis-spelling, we spent the night after leaving Sydney in heaving seas that made the whole cabin creak as the frame twisted with the movement. We had wardrobe doors that kept opening, Ted sliding across the window sill, glasses and a kettle that moved along the desktop and this lasted practically all night. We left it until 8.30am before we got up – showers were out of the question because of the movement – and gingerly made our way to the Al Fresco for breakfast. For reasons that I won’t go into I was in urgent need of prunes, figs, dates in fact anything that might help but Hilary stuck to a little pineapple and we both participated in Tomato Juice as a stomach settler. It seemed to work for me, although I must admit that I put the Sea Bands on before we went to breakfast and we took ourselves off to the Theatre Royal to watch Sherry give a tour lecture about Whitsunday Islands. They look fabulous and we hoping for much better weather by the time we get there, we don’t have a tour booked and we are planning to just visit a local town and beach and hopefully swim in a pool that doesn’t have the seasonal stinging jellyfish in it.

Our plans for the day that we set out from the ship’s itinerary included seeing the other lecture by Sherry today on Yorkey’s Knob and also going to a Portunus club meeting but the weather and the seas took a turn for the worse and we settled for a day in the cabin. Hilary was able to do her scrapbook for a while but eventually needed to get her head down and took a short nap. I piddled around with the Sudoku and got out the middle bit but then made a hash of the rest of it and then realised it would be a more productive use of the day if I got some more of the video onto the laptop and in fact this is happening while I am typing – I love these new multicore processors that allow you to multitask. We also watched a couple of movies on TV, the first was The Nannie Diaries with Scarlet Johannson and the second which is on now has Billy Crystal, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones in America’s Sweethearts. I have actually spent most of the day at our little table with the laptop in front of me while looking out of the window and simultaneously keeping an eye on the video camera screen to see what it is that I have recorded. We are gradually working our way up the east coast of Australia and when the mist clears we are able to see its coastline and I am glad to say that the wind and the seas have finally dropped down (it is around 4.30pm our time) so with a bit of luck we will have a nice easy dinner tonight and a good day in Brisbane tomorrow. Incidentally the couple that we spoke to last night about just going from Sydney to Brisbane were not unique, apparently P & O are doing a ‘taster’ and there are 140 of these people on board out of a total of 500+ that joined the ship yesterday.

That’s it for now, I will hand you over to Hilary who will do her Lurch impression as she moves from one side of the cabin to the other.

Tiz I. I’m making a bad job of keeping my head, stomach and legs in working order today. The sea was very lumpy and the cabin was in rock and roll mode. From the horizontal position I have been able to put together the first page of the scrapbook and the last page into order. I have also figured which photos I will need to be made into 3x2 inch size. Now all I have to do is write up the journal part of each page and I will be able to complete the second leg up to Sydney. I will take the camera’s memory card down to the photographer as soon as I can walk again! I think that I will run out of pages (even though I brought a spare pack) before I get all the pictures into the book – still I will get as far as I can. I expect that Sam will be back in Austin by now – exhausted after the journey home. Keep all your photos together sweetheart, I will be over and can’t wait to see them. It is not long now before Dad and I will see Jess in Hong Kong – if she can make it over there with her heavy schedule. I’m staying positive that she will be there and we can go shopping together. Sheila and Marlene how did your weekend in Cornwall go I hope you had some dry weather so you could visit some of the beautiful places down there. Tomorrow we visit the crocodile hunter’s zoo in Brisbane, I will tell you all about it when we get back. Take care, God bless.
Just came back from a fantastic evening show in the theatre by a young New Zealander called Will Martyn. Twenty four years old, started singing at 13, started playing the piano at 16 and is an incredible talent. A huge voice from a slight frame and he started with some classical, then went into Billy Joel, followed by Elton John and finished with classical. That young man will go far. The internet is iffy so without further ado I am going to post this. Tomorrow it’s the zoo and Brisbane.