We’re sailing towards our first port of call, Karratha, where we’ll explore the Burrup Peninsula and see ancient Aboriginal rock art in Murujuga National Park. It’s about 400 miles from our departure point, Broome, so we’re spending the entire day aboard ship. The seas were rough last night, but they’ve calmed substantially.

We’ve had two lectures already today; Richard Binzel of MIT started us off with “‘Everything’ About Eclipses”, and Joseph Heinrich of Harvard followed with “The Secret of Our Success”, discussing how culture and evolution have driven each other during human history. Later this afternoon, Joel Weisberg from Carleton will talk about “Naked Eye and Binocular Observation”, and he’ll lead our sunset and sky viewings this evening. The Captain’s Welcome Dinner is tonight, too.

We have a fourth lecturer on board, Meg Urry of Yale; her first talk is tomorrow before we dock.

They’re keeping us busy!

It’s been a long day; we got up early so we would be ready to leave the hotel at 8:30. We timed it so we’d be at the hotel restaurant just as they opened for breakfast – and so did the other 90 people in our group!

The flight to Broome was long but mostly boring. Our course took us over Alice Springs, which was receiving much-needed rain from the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Ilsa. The captain told us to expect turbulence but there wasn’t any – I didn’t mind being disappointed on that front!

The Caledonian Sky greeted us with drinks and food; and then there were more drinks and more food later in the evening. This could be dangerous.

We’re on our way to the Burrup Peninsula, arriving Monday morning (Rowley Shoals, our first planned snorkeling spot, took a direct hit from Ilsa, so we’re skipping it).

Connectivity aboard ship is not very good, so I may not be able to post very often. I see another retro-blog in my future.

I’m writing this post from the Sydney Domestic Airport – “Domestic” is a key word because it meant we could bring an unlimited amount of liquids and gels through security; even water bottles were OK!

I give Qantas and Criterion Travel a lot of credit for making the checkin process easy and quick for a large group – it was much easier than I’d expected.

I’m also very happy that we’re taking the flight we’d originally expected to take – a few days ago, the tour managers were warning us that Tropical Cyclone Ilsa was likely to disrupt our trip; they spent a lot of time looking for alternatives, but I’m sure they’re happy that that effort wasn’t necessary.

We will board the Caledonian Sky in Broome and sail to Perth; our first snorkeling stop has been canceled because of the cyclone, but they expect everything else to go according to plan. We hope.

Totality is five days and two hours away.

Our day started with a walk to the Royal Botanic Garden for a guided tour focusing on Aboriginal culture and history. Our guide, Darren, has Aboriginal grandparents and has lived in that culture as well as living in “European” culture; he told us a lot about the land, the history, and the culture as well as taking about the plants and animals in the garden. I wish I could remember a tenth of what he told us!

This is a bat habitat with a Native symbol for Sydney on it.

We saw many endemic birds and animals, like this kookaburra and Australian Water Dragon.

There were four different Aboriginal groups living in Sydney at the time of first contact; the one we heard the most about was the Gadigal, who are named after the gadi or grass-tree plant.

I could have spent the entire day learning from Darren, but that was not to be – he brought us to the edge of the Garden and then gave us back to our guides so that we could visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

It, too, was overwhelming; here are a couple of works that struck me: Ken Unsworth’s “Suspended Stone Circle II” and Grace Coddington Smith’s “The Lacquer Room”.

We had lunch at the museum and then set out to explore a little bit more of Sydney, walking past the Frazer Fountain (no longer operational), Town Hall, and finally to the Queen Victoria Building which is now a modern shopping mall.

We returned to the hotel and packed; then we went to the opening reception for the full tour group (there will be 100 of us on the tour; there were 20 on the pre-tour) where we picked up Covid tests that we had to take before we can get on the plane to fly to Broome tomorrow morning. Diane and I both passed. whew

A beautiful rainbow over Darling Harbour greeted us at breakfast this morning. After breakfast and a quick trip to drop our laundry at Wash in the Rocks, we joined the group to walk to the Sydney Opera House for a guided tour.

We learned the story of the construction of the Opera House, the political battle that brought in a new architect, lots of statistics, and got to see (and hear) the Sydney Symphony rehearsing and watch the some of the members of the Australian Ballet practice some of their moves. We weren’t allowed to take photos during either of those segments, but photography was OK during the rest of the tour.

Lunch was included at the Opera Bar; the view and conversation were good and the food was ok.

After lunch, our guide Ronan took us on a short walk through the Rocks and told us a few stories about the early European settlement of Australia. We’d seen the William Bligh statue on our Monday walk but didn’t know why it was there; Ronan explained that Bligh was the fourth Governor of New South Wales and suffered a second mutiny here (it was the only successful armed takeover of an Australian government)!

Ronan also took us to see the “First Impressions” statue on Playfair Street; he told us about the protest demonstrations because the statue completely omitted the original inhabitants of the land, the Gadigal People (Aborigines). The statue itself is interesting because it’s a three-sided sculpture; it would be easy to miss one or two sides if you weren’t paying attention!