What doesn't kill you makes you stronger

We had a great 2 days in port with Saturday spent in Bunbury on our own and Sunday on an organized tour of Albany. If I was ever to live in Australia, Bunbury is where I’d choose to live. It’s a quaint little harbour town with a multiplex...what more do you need?? In Albany we had an action packed full day of sightseeing. We started at the Tree Top Walk outside of Denmark, Australia. It was an opportunity for Kier and I to overcome our fear of heights. We walked through a forest of tingle trees, which are native to this area of Australia. We walked through the trees at heights reaching 40 metres on a steel platform which swayed in the wind. As you can see from the photos, the trees went much higher than that!! It was quite scary, but we survived!!

Here we are at the Tree Top Walk "going native"
with our authentic Aussie hats

These walkways really swayed with the wind
and with the other walkers...SCARY!!!

This made me a bit nervous...
there were 20 in our group...
but loads of others at the attraction

We also visited a wind farm, which is nothing new to us in the Maritimes, and then some really fantastic shoreline scenery in Torndurrip National Park which was reminiscent of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. We got to see kangaroos, emus and even a school of dolphins in the water. A great day for sure!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: There were several things I learned today...some things really educational and developmental....other things just down right gossip from the ship’s rumour mill. First off, the important stuff....I learned that doing things that scare the bejeezers out of you can be quite fun. I’m not sure why...but as soon as I got off that swaying platform and the vision of the headline "International Tourists Dye as Platform at Local Attraction Fails" faded from my frontal lobe, I was keen to give it another go. Unfortunately, the cruise ship tour arrived by that time and there were too many people to make a second go. But now...I’m up for the Harbour Bridge Walk in Sydney!!! Secondly, I learned some interesting ship’s news...gossip, grist for the mill...whatever you’d like to call it.... I call it "the juicy stuff"! There have been 9 deaths thus far on the ship...with 2000 passengers and an average age of 73 (although our acquaintances say it’s probably closer to 77 or 80), and you’re away from home, and your own medical care for 28 days, it’s bound to happen!! The other night they actually made an announcement over dinner that they were in urgent need of a blood donor for O- or A+ blood. Any suitable donors were asked to report immediately to the medical centre...never heard such a thing before on a cruise ship!! The other tidbit that there were 4 people removed from the ship...2 over a laundromat fight for a dryer and the other 2 because they were doing "unmentionables" in the hot tub on deck (and no, I don't mean washing their unmentionables...although that was probably a "by-product" of their activities!!). The things you hear when you’ve got "strategically placed sources"!!!! Well, off we go...we’re just on our way down to do some laundry...and then....maybe a hot tub ;)