Brisbane Harbor called back to inform us that that was “LOCAL” time, and that “local” time was now 10:58. It seems Brisbane works daylight saving differently to the rest of Australia. The Captain was not happy. We decided it would be politic to quietly leave the bridge and besides it was near enough 12:00 on the ship so it’s lunch time. We were half way down in the lift when there was an announcement that ships clocks would retard one hour “NOW” so we carried on and had lunch at 11:00am.

The pilot came on at 12:00 as arranged and we stayed down on D deck. Brisbane is an interesting harbor to approach as we needed to steam south for quite some distance inside some shallow water through a deep water channel. We seemed to be going all over the place because when I went inside there was land on the starboard side but when I went out again it seemed to be gone and there was now land on our port side and I’m sure we didn’t turn around. Anyway we were still following the marker posts. The pilots here would earn their wages as there seemed to be shallow water all over the place, you could see the change in the water color very easily. So it was tie up to the wharf at about 3:30pm and off to town.

We had a 15 minute taxi to the railway station and train into the City. We made arrangements to meet up with Duncan at 9:30pm. Then it was find Air NZ phone number and change our flights home, we were charged another $15.00 each for the privilege (Another rip off!!) and then went walk-about, found a reasonably priced Bar/Restaurant for dinner and just wandered around the mall area before returning to the Central Rail Station and thence the ship. The only problem we had was the damned taxi driver dropped us at the wrong gate again and we needed to walk for nearly a kilometer to the right one.

6^th November. The last day in the foreign port. We had a quiet day sorting a few photos etc., down to the ships office at 12:45 PM to see Customs and get our Passports stamped. Went out onto D Deck as the tug came along side and it started to rain so we went up to see if the Pilot would allow visitors, no problem. The Pilot was a very friendly chap who was very happy to give us some information about the local area and have a chat generally, except when maneuvering was necessary, as one would expect.. And so after the pilot went off it was off to cross theTasmanian and Auckland.

7^th November. Our second to last day at sea, this is in some ways a double-edged sword, on the one hand we are glad to be heading home, on the other the voyage has been so enjoyable it would be nice for it to continue. When we look back it seems like only a few days since we boarded at Tilbury, when in reality it is thirty-eight. We had a party night in the Officers Lounge with the whole crew to celebrate an Indian festival. As with the BBQ night it was a very enjoyable night. After a few drinks and something to eat there was horse racing shipboard style. Very much the