ramblin rose 3

SUNDAY AT SEA, NORTH OF AUSTRALIA - After more than a week of sailing the coastal wares around the continent Down Under, we bad farewell, as the travelogue narrator says, to the land of the kangaroo and the koala, the eucalyptus trees and the jumping crocodiles.
As a first visit to Australia, it was somewhat spotty. I never really really got away from the coast, and I was on land in only three places -- Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin. Hardly enough to say I "know" Australia, but enough to get a fairly good idea of its geography, at least along its exterior.
Australia is big, much bigger than the projection maps we studied in grade school would indicate. It is hundreds and hundreds of miles from north to south, and even more hundreds wide, from east to west. Just to the south of Sydney, in the southernmost part of the continent, in and around Melbourne, this summer has been hot. Hot and dry, like Oklahoma can be. Bush fires have been raging. Farmers have slaughtered their lambs and their cows because the range is all dried up and cannot feed them.
In Darwin, on the other hand, in the "Top End," it is now the rainy season. Everything is lush and green. Water stands in the fields. Rivers are bankfull. For the three days we were rounding the northeast corner of the roughly rectangular-shaped country, skies were overcast and rain splashed on the decks, sending all the sunbathers scurrying for cover.
I missed the opportunity to see the Southern skies, pick out strange constellations. The first few nights on the ship I was catching up on my sleep; the last several nights the stars have hidden under a cloud cover. No matter. Tonight I shall go out on deck and still catch a glimpse of half the southern sky.
Yesterday (Saturday) we crossed the Equator. King Neptune made an appearance on the uppermost deck, which was raked by wind so strong he had trouble holding on to his beard and hat with one hand, his trident with the other. Passengers stood six deep against the rail, cameras aimed at him. The moment the crowd began to dissipate, the wind knocked the rest of us about and we hastened inside. No traditional ceremony, but later in our cabin we each received fancy certificates acknowledging our crossing.
The Equator, as we learned in school, is an imaginary line. We could not tell when we reached it. In fact, ship scuttlebutt insisted we had crossed the line actually three hours before, but Old Neptune had scheduled his appearance in the ship's bulletin at 12:15 p.m., and that is when he had to show up.
So much for navigational accuracy in behalf of passengers.

So what are my impressions of Australia?
Friendly, above all. Aussies have been getting on and off the ship in droves at every stop. They far outnumber us on ship. I have played bridge with them, I have eaten with them, and I have chatted with them in the lounges. They are so very very friendly that I shall always remember Australia as a hospitable land.
They talk funny. They bid funny at the bridge table. They eat funny, manipulating their knives and forks as their British cousins and other Europeans do. They call the elevator the "lift," and the slot machines in the casino "the pokies." They don't open their mouths wide when they talk, and they clip short their vowel sounds. They drink lots of tea, hot tea.
Every last one of them has been somewhere in America, usually to New York or California, and most don't know where Oklahoma is.
Yet they are lovely people, and I have made many friends among them. They don't know a stranger, and they will tell you the most intimate details of their family life in the first five minutes of acquaintance.
And they are very confused. They cannot understand how America has become a proponent of war. They suggest, oh so politely, that we are a little arrogant about our place in the world?

Most interesting have been the flora and fauna of Australia. In the cities there are palm trees -- I think they are planted, not native since I did not see them in the "bush." The term "bush" pertains to uncultivated land covered in scrubby trees, second growth, and lots of vine and bushes. It can go up in flames like a forest fire. One tour guide explained that a gas given off by the hundreds of varieties of eucalyptus trees ignites readily. In fact, this natural gas can explode. It makes bush fires hard to put out, and they may rage for days.
As we drove inland about 60 miles to the Adelaide River near Darwin, we saw a lot of "bush," and a lot of fairly new mango orchards. These little trees are about the only productive plant that can be sown around there. Darwin is not a very big community, although it is capital of the Northern Territory, or "Top End." This territory is pretty big, straddling the demarcation between two of Australia's four time zones. So they split the difference, and there is half an hour difference here from Brisbane time, for instance.
The Adelaide River is long, wide and muddy, so muddy you cannot see an inch below the surface. The tides rise and fall four times daily. It is bordered by lush trees and vines, and inhabited by huge saltwater crocodiles. I mean, huge ones, some 24-25 feet long. These crocs were the star attraction for the day. We got off the coach and into a riverboat with reinforced glass windows. On the boat roof, young men tied strings on long rods and dangled pig's heads into the water to entice the crocs. When one slithered through the water to snap at the bait, the boys would jerk up their poles. And the crocs would leap high out of the water after it. They were billed as the "jumping crocodiles," and jump they did, to the delight of the passengers. I got several great pictures of their huge jaws opening up to swallow the pork, from a vantage point not three feet away. Of course, there was this glass between them and me.
OK, so it is a tourist trap, but a great show, and fun.

Martha had an adventure of her own. While I was snorkeling over the reef and thrilling to the crocs. she went rock-sighting. To the most famous rock of all, I guess, that humongous monolith in the Australian Outback, Ayers Rock. She and several others left the ship for three days and flew to the site of the rock. She had always wanted to see it, she said, and she is glad she went. I would like to have seen it also, but you can't do everything, and you have to make choices.
Both of us have been well pleased over our Australian adventures.
Tomorrow we stop in Borneo for the day, docking at a place called Kota Kinabalu, which I have never heard of before. I am going to take a train trip through the jungle to a native village. Don't know what I will see there, but I'll tell you all about it later.

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