Sunday March 05, 2023
Sunday today saw Anne attending early Mass and Roger the Captain’s service at 10 AM. We went to three lectures, enjoyed lunch and worked on reconciling accounts and the big excitement was a medical emergency. The Captain announced that there was a medical emergency in the Verandah restaurant followed soon thereafter by an announcement that people should not go out onto the open decks and the air / sea rescue helicopter would soon be arriving from nearby Cairns to evacuate the patient. The helicopter arrived about 5:30pm just outside our cabin window and came over the roof of the cabin at right angles to the ship, but as the ship was traveling forward at 18 knots, the helicopter had to also be traveling sideways at exactly the same speed. Furthermore, it had to also travel forward to hover over the ship. It let two people down and then backed off, traveling some 50 yards off the ship’s side but keeping “geostationary” / traveling laterally at the same speed. Once the person was secured to the basket, it came back over the ship, picked up the patient and flew away, however it then returned a second time, presumably to pick up the patient’s family. We all hope that the patient will be OK and well taken care of by the Australian doctors.
The lectures were interesting. Charles Barclay the Astronomer, spoke about the many famous women in the field of Astronomy and their contributions to the advancement of the knowledge base of the astros. Anne went to the 10AM to hear Dr. Robin Derricourt, talk about some of the out of the way places to visit in Sydney. We stayed to hear Suzanne Medway, the nature conservancy lady, who starts off fairly boring, but gets into the subject and it becomes more interesting the more she gets into the talk. This time she started listing animals from A, then B etc getting only to M by the time her allotted schedule came to a close. After each letter, she talked about the many strange and wonderful animals that exist in Australia that start with that letter of the alphabet. We were sorry she didn’t complete the 26 letters, but perhaps she will do so next time.
The final lecture was the very amusing speaker talking about the history of mail / post. From runners, to horseback, to stage coaches, to ships and ‘planes. The term Post come from the time where any information that the government wanted to communicate something to the population they would put a notice on a post for all to read. This then led to a bag being placed on the post for the people in the local area to either take the incoming mail that was being sent to them or put in correspondence that was to go elsewhere. The person that went to the post to pick up and deliver, was called the Post-Man. When traveling with mail on horseback, the rider had to change horses every 15 miles, so small buildings were constructed to keep the fresh horses and to pick up / deliver any mail for the people in that area. These became Post Offices and they were run by a Post-Master. Lots of fun and very interesting.
The evening performance was by a very funny comedian, who had all the audience in stitches- the British man married to an Australian and living in Australia, Jeff Green. Tomorrow we are up early as we hope to go swimming in the Great Barrier Reef in the Whitsunday Island’s region.
Roger & Anne Travels 