Tuesday March 07, 2023
The day at sea was most welcome after a tiring day yesterday including meetings with New York at 3 AM!. The first lecture by the conservation expert Suzanne Medway, discussed many of the interesting animals that live mainly or only in Australia. There are many marsupials – animals that keep their children in a pouch. One in particular was interesting in as much that the female has no nipples, but exudes milk through their skin so the baby can feed in the pouch. Also she mentioned that Kangaroos have the ability of stopping the gestation of babies if the prior baby is still nursing or if the conditions (heat, dryness) affect it from growing to be a viable baby. There are also several animals, fish mainly that can change their sex. If a male for example that is head of a group gets too old for reproduction then the healthiest female undergoes a natural change, becoming the dominant male. We actually saw one of these fish when we were out on the reef yesterday – this process is portrayed by the changing of it’s color.
Ken Sutcliffe, a very well known sports presenter in Australia spoke about his experiences covering many Olympics, Golf, Tennis, Cricket and most of the major sporting events in the world for Australian TV. He spoke well and related many interesting stories about interviews and actually becoming good friends with many icons of the sporting world in all disciplines. An amazing life and a fun time was to “go behind the scenes” through his stories of Wimbledon, the Masters, Winter & Summer Olympics over his many years in the buisness.
We skipped the Astronomer and enjoyed Captain Glen Robinson, although he was some 20 minutes late starting his presentation due to computer problems and still finished within the 45 minutes, so shortened his talk. It was all about life and obligations of a Great Barrier Reef Pilot. While it is nice to be on a luxury ship like Queen Mary with great facilities and food, it is not so much fun working on some older cargo, container or even live animal ships where some 8,000 live head of cattle or 20,000 sheep are being transported producing all the methane gas and the food is barely recognizable. Getting to work can mean a helicopter ride, a boat ride or in some cases, climbing a steel ladder imbedded in the hull and climbing up some 10 stores without falling down and killing yourself! They get a certain number of points per trip (mainly depending on the length and complexity of the piloting) and at the end of each week they have to have completed a certain number of points, which on average may be from 8-12 piloting events a week.
We worked on some computer stuff in the afternoon and enjoyed the show which was the excellent – White Violin Lady – Suzie G for 1/2 the time and the brilliant song and dance man – Wayne Scott Kermond. Instead of heading to bed after the show we went to the Queens Ballroom as the very funny comedian – Jeff Green was playing to a packed house for an hour of great laughter. He certainly had the audience completely captivated and rolling in the aisles. Tomorrow – Brisbane.
Roger & Anne Travels 