Sunday, 1 March 2020—Yorkeys Knob and Airlie Beach, Australia

Today is Neil’s 30^th birthday and we are on the northern portion of the eastern side of Australia. Yorkeys Knob is a small beach community that is on the outskirts of Cairns, the regional capital of far north Queensland. It is a small place and because our “Ocean Liner” is so large, it could not go into either Yorkeys Knob or Cairns—the water in each is far too shallow to accommodate our ship. Thus, we dropped anchor a couple of miles out from the shore. We were then “tendered” in by a series of small boats into Yorkeys Knob on Saturday.

Today we were tendered into the town of Airlie Beach—a small town but bounding with many Australian tourists and ship folk like us. They had a place off main street that was called The Lagoon and it was filled with many families there to enjoy the weekend. Between these two relatively small towns—Yorkeys Knob and Airlie Beach—is the Great Barrier Reef. According to Wikipedia:

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system comprised of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 1,400 miles. The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms.

The Great Barrier Reef supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site—as was Petra, which we visited about a month ago. What is coming next for us is a series of stops at Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.

We saw a film on our “Ocean Liner” late this afternoon about the early life of J.R.R. Tolkien. I close with a quotation: “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” (The Lord of the Rings).

Sincerely, your friends,

Neil (editor/photographer) and David