Update

Thursday January 9. Very, very warm in Cairns.

Well the ship sailed right on schedule at 2:00 PM today. It has a day at sea before sailing to the first Port in Papua

New Guinea, [PNG]

Unfortunately we were not aboard. When we walked on the ship yesterday afternoon we discovered that the contents of our room safe in Melbourne was still full of our passports and the valuable documents etc.

The next six hours of my time was spent trying to work out how to get them up to Cairns in time to allow the ship to accept us as embarking passengers. There is no way in the world that they would allow that to happen in this modern world.

So, booked into the hotel that Jim and Gail had vacated just hours before. 

Tomorrow morning Fellette and I get up at 4:30 and go to the Cairns Airport to fly to Port Moresby, [PNG], a two hour flight then we fly to Alotau on Fokker Airplane,  [good name for it!]  and spend one night there and in the morning watch our ship sail in, and then we board it.

I am trying to think of something profound to say but my mind fails me at this time.

One good thing did happen yesterday, we shared bottle of Champagne with Jim and Gail just before we left the ship.

I am so pleased that our Travel Agent, Edward, monitors his emails. He was working on flight arrangement for me at 7:30 AM Vancouver time, 1:30 AM Cairns time. I had the phone 12 inches from my ear last night.

How we got our passports is a whole other story, for maybe another day.