Day 34: 20231027 Friday, October 27, 2023- Brisbane, Queensland
The alarm went off at 6am and when we looked out our balcony, the ship was still moving slowly into the Brisbane Harbor area. There is a very long channel lined with a lot of industrial docks. It took some time for the ship to actually reach its berth and tie up. We believe about 500 passengers will be disembarking, some of whom have been on the Coral Princess for over a month sailing the South Pacific and Hawaii. We had breakfast delivered to the room, and it showed up pretty much right on the 6:30am requested time. We had just ordered some egg muffin sandwiches, coffee, tea,, bananas and yogurt. The bananas come sliced because Australia doesn’t want anyone sneaking off the ship with an intact banana.
Brisbane has a new cruise ship port that opened a little more than a year ago. Brisbane also was recently selected to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, so there is talk of adding a second cruise ship dock as part of the infrastructure improvements to prepare for hosting the Olympics. When we were driving around Sydney, we saw signs for several Olympics venues that are still being used for other purposes. The cruise ship terminal is nice and has real Wifi. I was actually able to get my iPhone and MacBook Pro to synchronize with iCloud over that wifi.
We signed up for a Princess Excursion described as Brisbane Wine and Rainforest and Glow Worms. The weather was cool with heavy overcast and scattered showers. The temperature was in the upper 60’s so it was comfortable for us. There were 25 people in the tour group. Although Americans seem to make up only 20% of the passengers, this particular tour was booked by a majority of American passengers. There were about 20% Aussies on the bus. We speculate that most of the Aussies had either seen these attractions or knew how to get around much less expensively than on a Princess Excursion.
The drive from the cruise ship terminal illustrated the industrial nature of the neighborhood, which is low lying on a river delta subject to flooding. Some buildings were built on stilts, like in parts of Florida, while larger complexes were built further upstream and on higher ground. As the bus headed for the Mt. Tamborine area, we drove through the outskirts of Brisbane and could see the downtown skyscrapers in the distance. We drove about 90 minutes south west, winding up into the foot hills. Our tour guide did point out sights including a very popular pie shop and a military base with a lot of infantry fighting vehicles destined for Ukraine.
Since we had driven from Sydney into the Blue Mountains National Park, foot hills, and Hunter Valley, we had seen much of the same geology, flora and fauna. The lowlands were more like the Hunter valley, but as we ascended Mt. Tamborine, a semitropical rain forest became more prevalent.
Our first stop was at the Mt. Tamborine Skywalk eco park. This is situated on some steep ravines in the rain forest environment and as the name implies, features elevated walkways in the canopy of the forest, as well as some paths on the forest floor below. It was a fairly compact eco park but well done and well suited for a cruise ship excursion in that it could be explored in detail in just an hour, and not very strenuous. One highlights was spotting a python in the wild, coiled up next to a fallen log off the trail. We were fortunate that other visitors had spotted it and pointed it out. We did not see any koalas in the eucalyptus tree canopy, but that could have been like finding needles in haystacks.
Our next stop was an interesting place that combined a vineyard, man-made glow worm cave and exhibit, and restaurant. We had never heard of manmade glow worm habitats, but this worked out surprisingly well. They made a cave with textured concrete and have a pathway with hand rails on either side that runs the length of the cave. It is climate controlled and the pathway is perfectly flat. No climbing in and out of boats. The guide used a red lamp to allow us to see the glow worms and the threads they use to catch their prey up close. We each wore a glow in the dark plastic emblem on our backs so that we could follow each other through the cave in the pitch darkness using the hand rails and faintly glowing stars and moons to maintain spacing and position. The effect was remarkable, even in a manmade cave, seeing the thousands of starlike points of light forming constellations in the dark like the night sky.
After exiting the cave, we went to the wine tasting room. The wines were interesting but fairly unremarkable. Behind the counter was row of bottles of “Donald’s Trump That if You Can” wine that was probably there for our benefit as American tourists. The tasting consisted of a sparkling wine, 2 whites 2 reds and a port. Within each pour there was a dry and sweet option so Janet and I would get one each so we ended up sampling all the wines.
Lunch was provided in a dining room and banquet facility adjacent to the wine tasting room which turned out to be a pretty good meal. There was a choice between beef brisket, chicken breast, fish fillet or seafood basket entrees with salad, fries or rice. There was even a custard dessert.
After lunch, we thought that might have been it for the day, but then we got taken to another winery with a much fancier tasting room and events venue that can seat 14,000 outdoors, with headliners including Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue and Jackson Brown. There were lots of wallabies grazing on the grass in the outdoor concert venue. At the end of the wine tasting, we each got a bottle to take home. We picked one sparkling wine and one shiraz to go home with. We’re ending up with quite a few bottles of wine to bring back to the States at the end of this trip.
The new cruise ship terminal is very nice, but it is located a 25 minute bus ride from Brisbane’s downtown, so we didn’t have time after our tour to check out the downtown. That will have to wait for another Australia trip.
Our evening included dinner in the main dining room and an ABBA trivia where we tied with 2 other teams for high score, but lost the tie breaker question, which was how many acts did ABBA compete against in the finals of the Eurovision contest where they won with Waterloo. It turned out to be 17 acts. We guessed 8, while the winning team guessed 12. The prize was just ship champagne, so that was no big loss.
The Princess Theater had comedian Jeff Green again with a new show. He does a pretty good stand up act that is funny enough, but we were pretty tired and had a hard time staying awake through the act.
Tomorrow is a sea day in the Coral Sea as we head to Willis Island. A new progressive trivia will start up in the afternoon, which we’ll probably participate in again.
