Monday on the Cruise

It’s been a few days since I have been able to enter a blog, as everything has been so busy, especially with the shore tours...

Monday morning I was too tired to make it to the talk on “Using unit histories to unlock the past”, which was at 8am, and didn’t think I’d get any value out of “Beginning your Family History”.  So the first talk I attended was one I’d given before – Assisted and Bounty Immigrants, which was in the Captain’s Lounge.  It went well, and after that I had nothing until lunchtime.  At lunchtime I was on a table in the main dining room, leading a Q&A on NSW research.

The afternoon marked our arrival at our first port of call – Noumea in New Caledonia.  Unfortunately, the tour we had selected and pre-booked had been cancelled, so we had to make another choice.  In hindsight, I don’t think we made the best choice.  But before our tour started, we had a little wander around Noumea.  Nothing much very interesting to see.  That hasn’t changed in the 30 years since I’ve been there, although Noumea is a lot bigger now.  The tour we chose was the scenic drive with wine and cheese stop.  It basically consisted of a drive through Noumea, then going to two lookouts (Our Lady of the Pacific, and then Ouen Toro) and then driving past Anse Vata beach where we stopped and went to a restaurant.  There we had three French cheeses, accompanied by three French wines.  That was very nice.  We had thought of eating in Noumea, but it was starting to rain and we hadn’t seen anything promising on our little walk, so we went back to the ship for dinner.