As we finished the tour of the oyster farm I asked Maureen if she would like a short flight in a helicopter. I’d flown in a helicopter across Sydney harbour some years ago in a traffic spotter helicopter for one of the Sydney radio stations. The weather had been horrible. In Broome the weather was wonderful […]
Dawn as we approach Airlie Beach – we were too large to have any chance of going a alongside, so it was a tender job. Maureen & I were fortunate in being allocated to the above craft for the trip ashore, rather than a tender boat. Not that there was anything wrong with the tender […]
Crown Princess – her first cruise was in 2006, 3090 passengers, and we never felt crowded. This would be our third cruise to New Zealand and we hoped to see the Bay of Islands, which will be our last stop of this cruise having missed the Islands during our last New Zealand cruise in January […]
Adelaide On arrival in Adelaide, we were met by Maureen’s cousin Hazel and her husband Ray and they kindly took us to Hahndorf which is a short drive in to the hills from Adelaide.The small town has a German background so rather than repeat myself I have added a link to a blog about Hahndorf […]
It has been some time since the end of my contract with the British publisher of Triangle Trade the contract ending a couple of years ago. I thought I’d try something different thanks to an author friend in the US. Her suggestion was to drop the price for the Kindle version of Ice King, which […]
Boeing 747 – the work horse of flying in the 1980’s How something simple can grow & grow! In 1986 I was asked to attend an operational meeting in London, to which I agreed. I warned Maureen that I would be away for a few days because I was going to London. Later it was […]
Napier shopping centre and a statue of a young boy waving to his mother. His mother with the pet dog. I first saw these two statues in 2017 and at that time the lady who modeled for the above statue was still alive and was in her early 80’s . The boy was her son. […]
The largest town in the South island of New Zealand, so named it is thought in 1848 after Christ Church in Oxford University UK. We visited Christchurch in 2017 during a cruise, at which time it was only six years after the 2011 earthquake, so we were keen to see how the town had progressed. […]
We splashed out because the price difference between the cheapest suite and Aquac Class was small taking in to account we would have added two drinks packages to Aquac cabins cost. The above was our welcome aboard gift – our ‘Butler’ would have unpacked for us but then we would have spent half a day […]
We entered the Suez Canal at first light, and with camera in hand I started photographing our transit. The canal had been built by Ferdinand de Lesseps between 1859 and 1869, and was opened in 1869. The Egyptian / French plan for the opening was to allow the Imperial Yacht L’Aigle, with the French Empress, […]
Das Island The photograph of Das Island has been downloaded from the net – I’ve marked the position of Das Is – under the ‘er’ of Persian under lined in cream. I think the only main change since 1963 would be the upgraded runway. I always had the feeling that the island was floating on […]
Maureen and I have completed 20 cruises since 2015 and 13 of them have been with Princess Cruises. So, I thought that I would comment on our recent cruise in Royal Princess, (launched in 2012) which was a 14 day cruise to New Caledonia, Vanuatu & Fiji. Crooners Bar– Deck 7 – the semi-circle is […]
Burnie (circled) is on the northern coast of Tasmania. Compared to mainland Australia Tasmania looks ‘small’ but to give you a better idea of the size of Tasmania the island is a similar size to Ireland, and larger than Belgium, Denmark or Sri Lanka. Once again, the shuttle bus service was free to visit the […]
It was getting close to Christmas 1981 so what to do about a staff Christmas party? Christmas in Australia is our summertime, so we would not be interested in a log fire, hot mead and Ho Ho Ho.Ideas were bounced around from restaurants (very expensive) to a cash outlay to allow the staff to do […]