Newcastle

Greetings upon arrival
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3.13.2007 Newcastle, Australia

The first sighting of Newcastle was by Capt. John Cook in 1770. In 1997 John Shortland discovered the Hunter River and the coal that resulted in it’s becoming Australia’s first export in 1799. Today The Port of Newcastle remains the economic and trade center for the resource rich Hunter Valley. Newcastle is the world’s busiest coal export port with over 3000 shipping movements handling cargo in excess of 90 million tons per year with coal representing 90% of it.. Most of it is shipped to Japan and China. Founded as a penal colony which supplied the labor for the mines, today’s population is more than 250,000. The closure of steel works in 2000 and an earthquake in 1990 has led to a huge

Waterfront redevelopment
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redevelopment of the downtown and waterfront area that promises to change the waterfront dramatically. In the meantime this city is not the greatest tourist attraction. Our tour took us around the city, the waterfront and suburbs. We did see a cottage marking the entrance to an old mine and visited The Christ Church Cathedral which has an interesting history and has recently benefited by the restoration made necessary by the earthquake. Donny and Joanne visited an old prison and Don says he can understand why so many prisoners killed themselves. Living and working conditions were deplorable and many got rich off of the free labor the prisoners provided. You can tell this was a tough area. During our tour we couldn’t believe the number of ships at anchor in the outer harbor waiting to come in and be loaded with coal. Our driver informed us there were currently 70 ships waiting and the average wait will be 2-3 weeks. What a life! Since the West’s didn’t return to the ship until just before our sailing at 6PM they were tired and decided to eat in. We had dinner with Joanne and Danny, the bridge people and Cynthia and Mike from Amelia Island and had a wonderful evening. Seventy new people joined us in Sydney to replace the 100 that left. A few more have left the ship for a few days to travel in Australia and will rejoin us up North.

Guardian of port entry
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3.14.2007 At Sea

We are now sailing north along side of the Great Barrier Reef. We can see beautiful beaches and are looking forward to visiting the famous Hayman Island on Friday. Today we all attended a fascinating lecture by Professor Geoffreoy Blainey from Harvard on the subject, “The Strange History of the Aborigines”. One of the interesting things was his description of the earth’s surface 40,000 years ago and the global warming that that took place over centuries that changed geography so much that it makes the current predictions of global warming seem like nothing.

Newcastle Beach
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Another good thing happen today-this was our first bridge game in this the fourth segment of our trip and I won for a change. Sallie was the big winner at bingo. We are collecting coupons when we win that can be accumulated and exchanged for gifts when we disembark.

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