Finishing Australia

We visited Brisbane, Cairns and Darwin to complete our Australian visit. Brisbane is a riparian city, and is situated in a sigmoid-shaped bend in the Brisbane River, about 8-10 miles from the ocean. The skyline is modern and expanding rapidly(picture). The climate reminds me of Miami and its latitude is about that of Hollywood. There are mountains nearby to the west and south. On this summer day in the Southern Hemisphere, I found it altogether too hot and humid. The downtown is the same combination of office towers, casinos, condos and shopping centers we saw in Melbourne and Sydney(picture). There are tremendous numbers of young Asians, mostly Chinese, on the streets. Eiko thinks many are here to learn English. Many are. But many are here to make money and find opportunity. And I think they are more appreciated here(where there is a lot getting done) than in a place like Fiji. Well, we walked the downtown a bit and returned to the ship. After 2 days at sea, we arrived in Cairns, a littoral town facing the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef. The Reef is a vast sheet of relatively shallow water which even contains mountainous islands. It extends from just north of Brisbane almost to New Guinea. Fresh water washing out of the Fly River in New Guinea is lethal to the coral. We passed through a channel formed by the WhitSunday Group, named by Cook. There’s not much to do in town. Darwin is completely tropical and steamy. It is the capital of the Northern Territories so it is an administrative center. We spent time in their new library and visited an exhibit about its participation in World War II. The war forced the construction of a road north from the nearest railhead as well as the construction of airfields around Darwin. I noticed a liquefied natural gas ship in the port. We headed northwest to Komodo Island in the Indonesian Archipelago. Following a day at sea, we arrived at the island. We took a stroll on-shore with our guides. (See pictures.) The guides carry long poles with forked ends to deflect any aggressive dragons. We ran into them almost immediately. Many were gathered around the watering hole. I would characterize these reptiles as land-based alligators(picture). They are large. Why they are here and nowhere else is not clear to me. There are no barriers to separate the people from the animals. The following day we arrived in Bali and toured some of the palaces and recreational parks of the now defunct monarchs(picture).You can see the quiescent volcano Mt Agung as it towers over this end of the island(picture). I thought the water park at Tirtigangga was beautiful(picture). Bali is unusual because it is primarily Hindu in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. The bombing attacks of 2002 occurred there in nightclubs of Kuta, a strip of beach shops at the southern tip of the island, not too far from our dock. Following our return to the ship, we heard the news of the large earthquakes and tidal waves in Japan. The captain told us there would no impact in the Java Sea. With that, we headed off to the northwest. Singapore, the next port, is about 1000 miles and 2 sea-days from Bali.