Waking up in Vanuatu’s Port Vila to a sight like this, no wonder I was itching to go ashore. In retrospect, I’d say this was the best stop on the Noordam’s South Pacific Island itinerary.
As you step off the gangway, you either go right to join one of the ship’s organised tours, or left to enter a market maze. Haggling is not part of the culture here: the price you see is the price you pay.
Annexed by the French in the 1840s and established as a penal colony, New Caledonia (or Nouvelle-Calédonie) is part of the French collectivity, and feels like a slice of France in the middle of the South Pacific.
Day 4: Nouméa
After two full days at sea, we woke up – that’s never too early, with Roy – to find ourselves moored at Nouméa, New Caledonia’s capital city, on Grand Terre island. Many of our 1,800-odd fellow passengers on the Noordam were already up, breakfasted, and streaming ashore.
After almost three lovely months with the family in Perth WA, Roy and I were ready for our 15-28 March getaway – a 13-night cruise on the HAL (Holland America Line) Noordam, round trip from Sydney to the South Pacific and back.
My Roy can be hard to pin down when he doesn’t want to do something. The mouth says: yes, sure, let’s do that sometime. But the eyes – and sometimes a slight twitch in the right eyebrow – say: no, I don’t think so, probably never.
That’s how it’s been about Rottnest Island, located just off Perth, WA. I’d been trying to get there for the past four years, and it just wasn’t happening.
From my South African perspective, Australia in general – and perhaps Perth WA in particular – is a wonderfully child-friendly country, just the kind of place you’d want your children or grandchildren to grow up in.
On yet another blue-sky-perfect Western Australia morning, and Australia Day to boot, it would be distinctly non-Aussie to do anything but head for the beach. The long curve of sand – barely a ten-minute drive from where we are in Burns Beach, Iluka – is a firm family favourite.
Though – or maybe because? – our passport is so dire and our currency so unreliable, one great thing about being South African is that we tend to migrate all over the world. As a result, we sometimes find old friends in unexpected places.
One such Durban school and uni friend of mine, Susan Lazenby (née Hopkins), lives in the beautiful seaside city of Mandurah, an hour south by train from Perth, WA.
Perth Transport‘s Currambine Station is 2.8km from our home in Burns Beach, and the train whisks you south to central Perth in 26 minutes and from there to Mandurah at the far southern end of the line; it’s $12.60 for a Day Rider all-day ticket.
Susan, Russell and family made the move from Joburg to Mandurah 22 years ago. When they arrived, the population was 40,003 strong – “We were the 003,” she says; now it’s closer to 90,000.
Sue taught in Mandurah for 15 years, and now heads up the English department at St George’s Anglican Grammar School in the Perth CBD (www.stgeorges.wa.edu.au/). But it’s school holidays right now, so she was free to meet me at the station and spend all day showing me the place that has become her community.
Teachers tend to know everyone, and everyone knows them. What’s more, Susan is a woman with wide and varied interests and a thirst for knowledge.
That’s how she knows all about this magnificent Morton Bay fig tree on Stingray Point, planted around 1930 on the site of what was to become the hotel Pensinsula, which closed in 2003.
Eight days in Singapore turned into 12 for me. Someone at the Aussie High Comm in Pretoria had bungled my visa application, causing me to miss my 19 December flight to Perth, WA with Roy. Luckily, and to the huge surprise of all, the visa came through just in the nick of time to allow me to board a flight on the 23rd to join Roy and the family for Christmas .
We’ve never been gym bunnies, Roy and I. Neither of us has belonged a gym for the past 10 years at least. Yet here we are at Virgin Active La Lucia, notching up a creditable three or four visits a week.
Can 1,200 kcals a day be part of a luxury getaway? If you can go without alcohol and coffee for a week, then the answer is a resounding “Yes!” – and you’ll find it at the outstanding Brookdale Hydro.
Brookdale is located in a lovely part of South Africa’s rural KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Not only was it just what the doctor ordered for a barging couple who’d spent the past four months bingeing on baguettes and butter – it was pure bliss.
