Today we arrived in Eden, Australia in NSW. It's Saturday, November 20th and it is tender time again into this small village of about 3,500 people. This is the fifteenth stop so far, but it’s nice to get into a little village like this rather than the large metropolitan areas like Melbourne or Sydney. The town is 300 miles south of the state capital Sydney and is the most southerly town in New South Wales, located between Nulica Bay to the south and Calie Calie Bay in the north.

The eastern coastline has rugged cliffs at the southern end and a wide, sandy surf beach north of the cliffs. This was a popular area for whaling which started as far back as 1791.

We all went ashore today, even Renetta. It was good to see her up and around. There has been a little sickness reported on ship, in fact one lady was diagnosed with such a severe case of pneumonia that she was taken by Ambulance back in Cairns and has been in the hospital there ever since.

Eden is definitely a fishing town now with their bait and tackle stores up and down the small main drag, albeit the whaling has been outlawed for quite some time (ended in 1930) - but their pods of Orca’s continue to swim in the coves and northern reaches of Twofold Bay. After close to thirty days in Australia, Deborah and I had our FIRST Australian Meat Pie and it was quite good, not a bad little snack for $5.00AU, but I’m told that it was really nothing to write home about compared with the steak pies in downtown Sydney. I guess another try at those will just have to wait for the next trip. I’ve been told by some of the Aussie locals on board that I just can’t miss the "green lipped mussels" here so I was on a quest. At the tender dock I was told that they farmed these little babies out in the shallows of Twofold Bay. Unfortunately I came up empty-handed and will have to wait until our New Zealand arrivals to find these apparently delectable little morsels. The weather was superb today, sunny with bright blue skies and a very comfortable 75 degrees F. Tomorrow is yet another formal night, so we’ll get all gussied up go. Based on what seems to my good relationship with #1 (Maître’d) in the Dining Room we’ve managed to snag Table #108, by the window on the starboard side for dinner each night for the remainder of the cruise. I’m not quite sure if we got this table because of those Hair people, as they’re in a suite so that could be it too.

With just the one sea day after we left Sydney, we’ll be in Hobart, Tasmania for the day with hopefully some good weather to help us explore this city of approximately 220,000 people. We’ll update you from there.