Australia!

We’re almost finished with this uber-long cruise around Australia. I haven’t done a long cruise in so long that I forgot how insane you get by the end of it. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome to finally see some new ports, but most ships have a high turnover of passengers and when you have the same people on board for a month it can drive the crew a little crazy.

    For two reasons, you’ve got the passengers who instantly take a dislike to the crew and then complain about every little detail for a month solid, as you can imagine this is no fun at all because no matter how you try to help them, they’ve already decided that nothing is good enough. On the upside, at least we know who to avoid after a week or so if we don’t want to get yelled at.

Then there are the nice people, who yes are a much more pleasant problem, and usually I don’t have issues with them at all. But around these people we have to be happy and chirpy every hour of the day, which is exhausting. Now on a 28 day cruise they get to know us a lot better than on shorter cruises so eventually certain people start ‘stalking’ me in a way. They will come to an activity that they know I am on simply to chat about what they did that day, which I know is lovely but when you’re trying to do your job and this sweet little old lady is telling you about what pattern she knitted that morning it can be a little frustrating.

Now the exception and this is rare, are the people who genuinely want to be your friend. Usually the passengers who are a little younger than the majority, and I have actually made some friends out of these ones, however they can never really be real friends since, even on a long cruise, they will leave and will probably never see me again. They seem to struggle with that concept. 

Now the best part of this cruise is by far the port time. Australia isn’t as interesting as New Zealand in my opinion, but I’ve only actually seen 5 towns which I suppose isn’t even 1% of the country. Queensland was fine, pretty much all jungle, very hot! Then we headed up to the Northern Territories and docked in Darwin, which was even hotter still. This is crocodile territory, very dangerous. Tourists are not allowed on the beach for fear of the huge 20ft salt water crocodiles, which is just fine by me. 

 Then we actually went up to Lombok, Indonesia but I was working so didn’t actually see much. Then down to Western Australia to Freemantle where we had an unexpected overnight stay, a whole bunch of crew chartered a catamaran which a LOT of fun, much debauchery! Then down to Albany where we were invited to a barbeque by a friend of a friend, nice barbeque and some time on the beach. It was nice to get some normality, a bit of family life. All be it someone else’s family but still. And now were heading down to Adelaide before going back to Melbourne which is the end.

So that’s that....the crew bar is calling me.

Ciao xx