Hi All,

It is a wonderful morning on the Navigator as we head toward Melbourne. Had a lovely dinner in Prime 7 last night with Crystal and Betty. Yes, Lee, we toasted you with Onion Rings. Went to the show, a juggling comedian performed. Andi and Doug joined us. Think I'll miss his next show. It sure is good to see familiar faces and meet new friends. Will add more later.

LOVING your seamail!!!! It sure helps with rainy weather here and boring chores

Same here...can't wait for more and loved everyone's pre-Dingo posts!!!

Nancy

We were delighted to discover John McNeill is captain. His sailaway with bagpipes blazing was magnificent in cool, crisp weather. The ship and crew shine. The GM is an import from Oceania. Ray Solarie, the CD, is magnificent. Excellent dinner in P7 last night just three tables from Beth, Betty and Crystal. Enjoyed watching another couple fight it out over their dinner--the body language was something to behold. The evening show was decent. the bars were deserted after the show. Shucks! Two excellent lectures this morning. It is cool and crisp outside with calm seas. Life inside couldn't be better.

Pat

Thanks for the sea mail Beth and Pat! Sounds so wonderful! Looking forward to as much as you and the other dingbats gave give us!

Ah ha, I've found the new proper post!
My iPad and the ship internet do NOT get along. So I've resorted to my netbook.
So far the trip is amazing. I really like the Navigator. I also think the captain isn't too bad...

I tried to nap this afternoon (4 am wake ups are getting old) but no success. I suppose it will be an early night then tomorrow the Great Ocean Road!

Got to tell you one more thing today. We were on this marvelous ship for 20 days last May cruising through the Panama Canal. Since we boarded in Sydney, we have discovered about a dozen crew members, bar and dining staff, have been on since May. Amazing. Two are scheduled to go back home--FINALLY--when this ship docs in San Francisco. One is on for another six months. Well, not only do we recognize them, they recognize us as amazing as that seems. I encountered several by myself and was asked "Where is mister Fred?" This morning, at breakfast in CR, our waiter approached us and said: "Let me guess. You both are having Eggs Benedict." Bingo! An experience like that is far more compelling to us than anything the Silver Seas Society offers. We are back at home and it feels wonderful.

Pat

Just when I thought a nap wasn't going to happen....
wake up it's dinner time!
Missed the captain in his kilt
Off for my dinner date with Betty.

Pat: The Navigator and crew are #1 with me also. I would love to continue my cruising life with them. However as a "single supplement" it is not economically feasible. Silverseas now has my future business with 10% single supplements on some cruises.

Betty: Did you make the lifeboat drill this cruise?

Crystal and I had dinner with Capt. McNeill and ACD Lisa del Vecchio. All guests of our table of 10 had a LCT connection. We dined with Carolyn and Don, Noel and Tom (konagolfer)and Aileen and David (lurkers and soon to be LCTers) from Scotland. It was a delightful dinner. Great conversations.

Off to our trip down the Great Ocean Road this AM. (it's 7:22AM Thursday here). More later.....

Sounds like a fun dinner with Capt. McNeil Beth. Will you say hi to Noel and Tom for me...we played on same trivia team, nice couple.

Beth,

Will you please say hi to Lisa for me . .and ask her if she'll be on the Mariner this winter . . . .

Thanks and have a great trip!

Peggy

Good morning from Melbourne! I had a wonderful dinner last night with Betty and now I'm off to see the Great Ocean Road.

Beth, that sounds like a fun dinner! Always great to make acquaintances with new lct people! Hope you all are enjoying your drive on the Great Ocean Road, whatever that is!

Editing to say I just googled it and found this website. http://www.greatoceanrd.org.au/ That's a long way! Can't wait to hear about it!

Yeh, I want to know what the Great Ocean Road is, too. It sounds very cool! Hope it was a great time for all!

Must be something like the drive along the Big Sur?

We had a great Ocean Road trip today. Many thanks to Beth for finding another outstanding guide. Thematically, it's along the lines of the CA coastal highway, but has its own unique flavor. Beautiful! The terrain is fascinating, with ocean to one side and rolling hills to the other.

We also saw a multitude of critters, ranging from a koala and her baby to hopping kangaroos, to kangaroos lounging on a golf course, to cockateels and other birds--with a fondness for Lauri's head, to an echidna. It was a long day, but a fun one.

What an incredible day! The scenery, the wildlife, the company...all amazing!
We saw kangaroos and koalas (with babies!) in the wild, got up close and personal with wild parrots and had so much fun! A very long day but so worth it.

End of 12 hour excursion that turned into 13 hours. We drove over 600 kilometers today. Saw the most amazing sights ever. Hope I can remember them all to post tomorrow or the next day. BUT camera battery died about the time we spotted a koala mama and her baby in a tree in the wild. And Lauri with the wild parrots in love with her hair. I was sick about it the rest of the day. Missed lots of good Kodak moments, but the others have photos.
I have seen more of Australia than any other country visited on a cruise and I still can't get enough. More tomorrow (Melbourne), then off to Tasmania (which is still part of OZ) Beth picked a perfect guide. Everyone should plan a trip here. An amazing country.

beth. Who did you use for a guide for the ocean drive.

Ocean Drive sounds great - I'd love to know your guide too please. I just booked our trip to Australia for October 2011!

Oh, that all sounds so great!! Good job on doing such a cool drive!

November 17-19
Day at Sea and two days in Melbourne

Our first evening on board was spent with our pathologist friend, Lauri, over dinner where Doug and I finally, I think, understand pathology. We had visions of her working on dead people and now realize she is instrumental in keeping folks alive. She's definitely a good person to keep around.

We awoke to a clear, but chilly, day at sea. Wildlife were abundant and the humped back whales were darting and weaving alongside the ship. Sandra gave another wonderful presentation in the morning met up with our new friends (we shared a van with them from the Hyatt to the ship) for lunch. I spent a great deal of the day trying to arrange tours for us for the next two days in Melbourne. We had signed up ages ago for tours, but had been wait listed and nothing had cleared that looked remotely interesting to us, with most of the tours left being boring old people's big bus tours. We thought a 4 wheel drive tour on the 18th sounded fun and an animal adventure on the 19th called koalas and kangaroos sounded like fun. The destination desk, while pleasant and patient, were fairly useless. They couldn't tell us where we were on the wait list and a 4 hour private tour was $600. We finally opted for the private tour, but the destination desk told us it was too late to book anything privately. One of my gripes with having all tours included is that, since the tour price is included in our cruise cost, we want to take the tours that interest us. We have to still pay to do what we want and it is like paying twice. Nevertheless, I hopped onto trip advisor and sent an email to Melbourne Private Tours and they were only available on the 19th. I kept dropping by the desk and finally secured 2 tickets to the 4 wheel drive adventure. With tickets clutched happily in hand, Doug and I had a delightful dinner with some former cruising buddies, Pat and Fred.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed, we joined our group for our 8 hour tour. Little did we realize that 4+ hours would be spent in a bus. Now, I liked the tour but I think Doug would have preferred if I had not had the good luck of securing the tickets. I must say we were joined by the most delightful people. While these big bus tours have their drawbacks...having great things pointed out in the right when you are sitting on the left, the obnoxious people who linger in the gift store and make us all late, having to rush through a great stop or miss passing photo ops, getting held captive at a boring stop or being dragged to the tour guide's uncles' gift shop....this tour consisted of a very nice and considerate group and we totally by passed gift stores. After a 5 minute potty stop and a 2+ hour trip, we divided into groups of 6 and piled into Range Rovers. We learned that this area of Victoria state was settled by miners looking to make a quick buck on gold. Since copper was more abundant, towns often consisted of mines and refineries. When things got tough, folks took apart their wooden plank homes, got on a train and moved on. What remained were ghost towns. We then rode from one ghost town to another, noting that these were really ghost towns as even the original buildings no linger existed. We heard tales of what used to be there via photos. The trip really centered in a guided tour of our Range Rover and what one could do off road with this he man vehicle. We splashed through rivers, climbed steep terrain and learned about equipment you could put on the RR, such as a snorkel and why a car would even need a snorkel. By this point, Doug was ready to stick needles in his eyes for some fun, but the call of lunch prevented him from injury. We were informed that lunch was a meat pasty or a Cornish pasty (lamb and veggies). We stopped a few minutes for a lav break and we found most of the food was gone as they hadn't enough food for all of us. Then, the rain came down....

The ride back seemed like forever. Traffic delayed our return until 5:50. We had an aquarium trip that evening due to leave at 6:15. Like quick change artists, we rushed in, changed out of jeans and rushed back out to buses. I quickly checked to see if any tickets had become available for the 19th and there were none. We confirmed a private day trip with Melbourne private tours. We got a brief tour of the city on our way to the aquarium. The aquarium was small but nice, fish (shark) and chips and sushi were served. I felt awful eating this stuff in front of the fish. Somehow, it just didn't seem right.

Doug and I discussed what we learned from our day out. 1) The Australian bush is a forest; 2) Australia looks like the US, 3) that Australians shorten their words to the diminutive (brekky for breakfast, minty for mint, Telly for television, footy for football and so on) and 4) add an ie, y or o to the end of your proper name...e.g., Robbie, Robby or Robbo.

We left our brekky card on our doorknob as a wake up call. Regent now appears to call you 20 minutes earlier than your requested delivery to tell you your room service is on the way. I pulled the covers over my head and Doug grabbed a robe to let his earlier than planned food in. Looking out, we noticed we had a clear day with blue skies. We met our driver, Rob/Robbie/Robbo, at 8:30 and discussed a plan of action forth day. We agreed on skipping a city tour and to go directly to the Healesville Sanctuary in the Yarro Valley, a bit over an hour away. This sanctuary is a zoo specializing in native Australian animals. It is located at Healesville in rural Victoria, Australia, and has a history of breeding native animals. It is one of only two places to have successfully bred a platypus, the other being Sydney's Taronga Zoo, though the platypus there was quite dull. Healesville actually has a platyspusary, so this could be quite special.

The zoo is set in a natural bushland environment on 78 acres where paths wind through different habitat areas showcasing wallabies, wombats, dingoes, kangaroos, and over 200 native bird varieties.The sanctuary was threatened by the Black Saturday bush fires, which devastated this area 2 years ago and the sanctuary even evacuated their zoo. Today, it runs a respected animal rescue hospital, home to animals injured in the wildfire.

The trip to the valley was scenic. We passed vineyards, stud farms, dairies, farms and orchards, framed by rolling green fields and distant mountains. Wild kangaroos hopped along the green pastures. We stopped at Domaine Chandon as well as many times during our trip for photo ops.

We arrived at the sanctuary in time for kangaroo feeding time. I never realized that there were so many types of kangaroos....brown, grey and red...and that a group is called a mob and that they are really friendly. I was charmed by them and enjoyed feeding and patting them. Sadly, they are hunted for food and grocery stores sell the meat. It is best rare and very lean and healthy. I couldn't bear the thought of eating one of my new furry friends.

We then went to a birds of prey show and a barking owl nearly crashed head on into me. I had to duck. I was filming him and hope it came out. We visited the platypusary and saw two rather active platypusses/platypusi? Off to the dingoes and they didn't steal my baby...

The koalas put on quite a show for us, especially this one male who was awake and eating. He emitted a wild mating roar (which the female slept though) and hopped over to some other branches, all within a couple of feet from our noses. I hope that video comes out too. The Tasmanian devils are interesting creatures and very cute. However, 90% of their population has been eradicated over the past 14 years due to a devastating cancer for which no one knows the cause or cure. Genetic testing is underway at present. We wandered through the park to see other critters before heading home. We stopped at the Danderong forest at a picnic areas and were met by loads of wild parrots and cockatoos, who proceeded to land on our arms and heads, try to steal Doug's hat and stole my Kleenex. What a hoot!

The weather was glorious and our day ever so much fun! We arrived back at the ship just in time to watch Ngaire, Ken, Carolyn and Fred lose mercilessly at trivia. We even helped them lose! We then went off to a fantastic aerobic show in the theater before going to Prime 7 for dinner with Betty, Lauri, Ngaire and Ken. I will try to download some pics tomorrow, which is another sea day before landing in Hobart, Tasmania.

Great seamail Andi - thanks

Loving your SeaMail, Andi. Your reports have me anxiously anticipating the next installments. Thanks so much.

Love the seamail, Andi-get Doug to post some pictures!

This is the first thing I read every morning, thanks so much Dingbats!

Andi, this is so ME ! I totally understand. Love your reports and all the fun you're having. We really loved Hobart, went to an animal sanctuary similar to what you just described. I wanted to bring a koala and kangaroo back onboard but Capt. Dag said NO...party pooper!

Gorgeous day today. Sea is calm and the sun is shining. Hardly a cloud in the sky. Big high pressures over this area and it looks like it will be a good crossing over the Tasman Sea. The weather gods are being good to us.

Dinner last night was in Prime 7 with Andi, Doug, Lauri and Betty. Again I ate too much the food was excellent. Crashed after dinner again.

We have not gone to any of the lounges after dinner this trip and we usually do that. Not even gathered as a group at any one spot before dinner either. Funny how every cruise "works" differently. The music is pretty loud in Gallieos for dancing before dinner so it is harder to talk. Then the piano player is loud in Stars as well. We have to make a decision and start meeting it is a nice time to visit.

Dolphins are playing right outside our balcony right now so cool.

Well it is time for our first POOCH game the poochers are getting restless so I am off to start the DINGO POOCH TOURNAMENT.

Tonight the drawing of the 2010 Free Cruise Winner - Captain McNeill is all set to draw that winning name.

I second everything Ngaire just posted. The dolphins was such a beautiful morning surprise. Good omen for winning Pooch....not likely.

I now (sort of) understand Pooch. At least I didn't embarrass myself too horribly. I had some very patient teachers....well except when someone called me the technical name for a female dog.....

Lauri, I am so glad someone else here says they "sort of" understand Pooch! I didn't want to admit the same thing, because everyone is such a PRO here! I finally got to learn from Ngaire on un-TUT but I never really got comfortable with it. Thank God everyone was so patient with me, especially Ngaire. I definitely need more practice and can't wait until I get the opportunity.

I'm betting someone called you the B word is because you had BEGINNER'S LUCK! (Right? ;) )

Loving reading everyone's seamail. Especially glad you have McNeill as your Captain - he is the best we've had on any cruise, for sure.

OK - Here's another one who only "sort -of" understands Pooch! :eek:

Enjoying these reports, everyone! It almost feels like we're cruising with you all. Keep Them Coming!

Not much beginners luck here. I just can't wrap my head around whether I want to win a trick or not. The Type A in me wants to win everything but sometimes I want to win zero tricks? Huh?
I think I might leave this afternoon's game to the experts. Besides, a sea day nap is in order.

Here is the "official" dingo for DINGO!



Doug

This is what had been spotted when I discovered my camera battery had "expired" and why I was so unhappy about losing power.
Lauri gave me permission to post the perfect shot of Koala and baby in the wild.

You can never have too many koala pictures!




Doug

Thanks Betty for posting that for me. Believe it or not, it was the last of 20 shots I took of that mama and baby. I'm such a rank amatuer when it comes to photos but I have fun.
Block party tonight. I managed to get some laundry done this afternoon along with watching Inception for the second time (and I still don't really get it, but I do like it....kind of like Pooch.)

Andi made a new friend.





Doug