Great Barrier Reef gateway Cairns QLD 3/12 Day 68

GBR Flynn Reef outer ribbon  reef snorkeling Reef Unlimited adventure

Ginourmous. Size of Japan. Only organism visible from space. A quarter of all marine species --1600--on the planet. live on the GBR, Great Barrier Reef. 

Going to town in Townsville, Queensland 3/11/26 Day 67

Magnetic Island, a national park. On the Forts Trail we saw 4 koalas and 5 wallabies in the wild!  30K steps great day!

The Strand Promenade 

Reunion with mates in Sydney, NSW, Australia 3/7-8 Days 63-64

Segment change over and mate reunion.  My beloved mate of almost 36 years, Hilary, joined me so did my dear mate of 44 years, Ian Rosenbaum and his wife Debritu.  We had met 44 years ago on the Manley Sydney harbour ferry where where he was leading a HaBonim Zionist youth group outing and I had noticed the Jewish apparel and struck up a conversation.  We became fast friends which included an overland odyssey road trip through the outback with Rabbi Arthur Bielfeld who visited me on his round the world sabbatical. We drove out to Adelaide and along the gorgeous coast to Melbourne and back over a week.  This was our third cruise overnight visit to Ian and Debritu's home in St Ives on the North Shore.  We marveled how their boys, Yoni and Ben, had matured into fine young mensches from energetic boys.

Ian and Debritu picked up Hilary from her long flight to SYD from DEN via LA and IAH (long story and even longer flight!) and then Gabe and I and whisked us to their home via a scenic detour to Lane Cove National Park complete with Kookaburras and flying foxes.  After a rest, we made a sacred memorial pilgrimage to the eastern suburbs of Double Bay to Bondi Beach to pay tribute to the 15 souls lost in the Chanuka massacre whose ripples shocked the Australian Jewish and and non Jewish community alike into vigilance and resilience, upset our Chanuka cruise in the Mediterranean, and increased security protocols throughout our Jewish heritage world cruise visits.

Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre memorial.

Matilda Bee 10 yrs old

We went to a suburb evening performance at the Sydney Opera House to see a contemporary adaptation of  Puccini's "Turnabout" which takes place in China where we will be for Passover.

After the performance Ian and Ben "Jubered" us back to their place while we visited the famous Luna Park that Ben idolized as a child.

                         

NSW Art Gallery and the new Modem Art addition.  The Art Gallery has two art museum buildings in the Domain in Sydney on Gadigal Country. These have been given Sydney Aboriginal language names: Naala Nura, meaning 'seeing Country', and Naala Badu, meaning 'seeing waters'.  We enjoyed the indigenous art to see Australia and its stunning waters in a new way.

We meandered to the Botanic Gardens complete with the Jurassic Fern pavilion and then to the Macquarie scenic harbor walk.  

We then toured the historic NSW public library and gallery and completed our tour with the Archibald fountain in Hyde Park with a peak at the outside of the secured Great Synagogue.

Farewell to my mate, Ian, and Gabe and hello Hilary as our cruise continues heading north to the tropics of Australia's Deep North and Far End!

Waitangi (Bay of Islands) eclipsing cultures on the Weeping River, NZ March 3 Day 60

At 2:20 in the morning I woke up to this lunar eclipse, where the earth's shadow made the moon "disappear", an ominous omen of the British eclipsing indigenous population.

Māori (commoner) warrior canoe ride, double pontoon canoes--a 5000 yr old tradition of catamarans and navigating by the stars.  I enjoyed this Māori owned and operated cultural experience where the local chief explained how the various tribes were perceived as different as different counties in Europe.

We paddled up the Waitangi (Weeping) River with traditional Māori canoe commands after  learning about Māori spirituality of the four gods: sky, earth, water and wind and their children.  Thankfully, we were aided by a special warrior paddle, Yamaha! 

After I visited the most important historic site in New Zealand, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds with the Treaty House through the signing of the Declaration of Independence, He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni, in 1835 and the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840 where the British and Māori people agreed to live together as partners in an independent nation.  Of course, the two documents were translated differently--every translation is indeed interpretation and as usual the indigenous people get the short end of the treaty stick by the colonialists!

                       

Auckland, NZ March 1-2 Days 58-59 Purim delight and LHR reunion

Return to Auckland after 44 years since my Student pulpit and my jubilee visit 18 years ago.  

Our first day was a bonus day to void the cyclone over Tonga and it was a 38k step great day  We took the ferry over to the dormant volcano Rangitoto for our scenic harbor tour and hike and then over to quant Devenport where we combed the thrift "Opp"(ortunity shops.  Back in Auckland  we went to the gorgeous Auckland Art Gallery complete with contemporary Polynesian art pieces and then over to Albert Park and  University of Auckland O(rientation)  week with a happenstance visit to the notable Jewish macher, Alfred Nathan's House.

At night we went over to the Auckland Hebrew Congregation for Purim services at their new campus in suburban Remuera at a former private girls' school.  The rabbi and shaliach read the whole megillah as we enjoyed hamantaschen and fellowship form visitors from Papeete to our cruise ship.  We saw a small but determined congregation dress up and shake home made groggers.  The congregation continues.  Membership includes AHC 300 people,  Beth Shalom 100 units, 2 Chabads with 50 each totally about 3,000 in Auckland and about 5,000 in NZ out of a total of five million people.

Naomi Johnson picked us up at the pier after we watched a Maori welcome ceremony and whisked us away to a forest bath in a suburban hidden nature area on the North Shore, Kauri Glen Reserve, to experience stately Kauri trees and fauna after carefully scrubbing our feet at the compulsory disinfection stations.

LHR stands for "Little Hairy Rabbi" as Gordon Stern called me remarking on my huge Jewfro and mustache (see below).  Over a yummy dairy lunch complete with hamantaschen at the Kosher Deli, we reminisced about Temple life then and now with L-R Jill and John Pesaro, Chris and Arthur Berman and Naomi Johnson who like me have aged as the congregation has and celebrates 70 years of service.

Temple Beth Shalom,180 Manaku Road, Epsom then and now:

Then 1982          Today 2026

                                                             

Carpe Diem at the International Date Line (Friday 27th) Day 0

Friday the 27th didn't exist on our ship as we crossed the International Date Line.   But Shabbat services must go on, so after a short meeting of the Synagogue at Sea Ritual Committee everyone agreed that Thursday night would be better than Saturday night to celebrate Shabbat.  My philosophy professor at HUC-JIR Dr Alvin Reines (who wrote Polydoxy) always said, you should celebrate shabbat on any day that was convenient for you.  He was right!  We'll gain back the day when we cross back from Japan to Alaska and get another day.  I recall two years ago traveling back from Japan enroute to Hawaii  where we observed two days of Yom Kippur--the Ritual Committee wisely decided to only observe the first day lest we have an incredibly slow fast!

Truly time is not only relative but plastic!

Bora Bora, French Polynesia "and a rooster in a breadfruit tree" 2/23/26 Day 51

Finally!  On the 2023 Volendam "Bali Cha'i, Tales of the South Pacific." cruise, we awoke at five in the morning to catch a glimpse of the cloud covered eerie Bora Bora that the captain swung by as a consolation for not docking. At last, we made it to the insanely gorgeous Bora Bora!

After visiting the Roman Catholic church with Tahitian disciples, we headed out for a lagoon snorkeling excursion on an island tour.

We saw a rainbow of tropical fish in a coral garden, including: one stingray, two giant mantas, three parrotfish, four butterflyfish, five clownfish, six damselfish, seven surgeonfish, eight angelfish, nine needlefish, ten reef fish, eleven eagle rays,  twelve black tip reef sharks and a rooster in a breadfruit tree!  

Our two guides blessed us with humor calling our fishing boat the Titanic and telling shark jokes as we nervously swam with the blacktip reef sharks (on a shore excursion, one congregant was bit and had a dozen stiches!).  They told us what its like to live on a small island on ten thousand where they know everyone and have difficulty dating  They shared with a smile  that before we're married we have to ask our grandpa, "Hey, are we related?"

They told us that their island Vavau as it is known among locals was misnamed Bora Bora from the island chief telling people to clap when Captain Cook arrived, saying Pora, Pora, (Clap, Clap).  But maybe the joke was on us, as Pora Pora is customarily translated as "first born" as it was the first of the volcanic archipelago or the legends describing this as the first island to rise when supreme god Taaroa, fished it out of the waters after the mythical creation of Havai'i, now known as Raiatea which we visited a two and a half years ago aboard the Volendam.