Tuesday 7th March The ship crept towards Dunedin which is on the south east coast of the South Island & eventually docked at Port Chalmers several km up the inlet. The countryside looks very English with rolling hills on either side of a long but not too deep inlet with small settlements at intervals along it. We tied up on a wharf opposite the Dawn Princess overlooking stacks of pine logs & containers. It was freezing at 12°C with a very sharp bre...

Saturday 4th March At sea with some movement due to wind & swell on a very grey day again. After breakfast d*** went to a talk on the ocean between Australia & NZ, given by an interesting American who had migrated to New Zealand. He talked about a couple of devices used to collect sea temperature data all over the oceans & a little sea glider to collect scientific data. From these tiny craft the weather of the oceans is forecast particularly with re...

Wednesday 1st March At sea again today starting with fog which cleared at about 10 am. After the usual sessions of Spanish & Bridge we had a fairly lazy day. In the evening we went to see the piano, violin duo present their last concert, which was excellent. Thursday 2nd March d*** woke early to see the lights on the coast & then dozed while we entered the Heads of Sydney Harbour, where we anchored about 2km out in the harbour, before the Opera House,...

Monday 27th February An almost dead calm day with fog. The decks were quite wet so we assumed that it had rained in the night. d*** went to a lecture on Aboriginal Art of the Canning Stock Route & Spanish & Jane was at Bridge lessons in the morning before a lecture by Dickie Arbiter on life as a press secretary with the Royal Family. Jane went to the Passenger Choir concert & after dinner we went to the Classical Recital &Jane went to a dance s...

Sunday 26th February Awoke to find us anchored off Kangaroo Island together with the Astor a Fremantle based cruise ship. Went ashore at Penneshaw, after breakfast, in a tender landing at a jetty next to the vehicle ferry from the mainland. The island is about 150k by 50k stretching west about 100k south of Adelaide & Penneshaw is about 50k east of Kingscote, the main town. We walked up to a small cruise ship market on the edge of the local oval & bought...