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Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and the third largest city in Australia with 2.4m people. Named after the river on which it stands on which in turn was named after a Scotsman called Sir Thomas Brisbane who was the…

Sailing towards Sydney during our last night of the first segment of this cruise, the seas became quite rough and as a consequence I awoke at 1am and couldn't get back to sleep. This was the roughest night we'd had…

The first of two stops in New Caledonia was on the island of Mare pronounced mar-ray which is the second largest of the four Loyalty Islands. It is also one of the least visited islands in the Pacific. James Cook…

Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands in the South Pacific with a total population of 281,000. We stopped at the capital, Port Vila on the island of Efate. In 2007 Vanuatu was voted as the happiest place to live.…

Lying just 71km south of Suva was one of the smaller inhabited Fijian islands called Dravuni Island with a population of just 125 and an area of 0.8 square km. Tiny. No roads, no cars, no multiplex cinemas.  We were…

Our first Fijian stop was the capital, Suva, which was reminiscent of the Caribbean capitals - Castries, St Johns and Bridgetown. Lots of hustle and bustle, masses of people selling curiously shaped vegetables and a general scruffiness.  Suva us the…

Pago Pago pronounced Pango Pango on the island of Tutuila is the capital of American Samoa which as the name suggests in an American territory and one of only two below the equator. The island group is roughly the size…

This was my second visit to the Hawaiian Islands and I have a feeling I will come back again to do Big Island and Maui. Also a longer stay in Waikiki would be rather jolly good.  Susan and Brenda thought…

I joined the Maasdam as a 4 Star Mariner which entitles me to half-price wine packages, tender priority and of course the biggest boon of all, free laundry. They'd taken my Swiss Army knife away at security. Apparently they'd changed…

We left early as we had a 1pm lunch reservation with Brian at a golf club in Palm Springs and he thought we wouldn't make it. Dora expressed an interest in seeing Joshua Tree National Park which was on the…