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in a purple passage that would justify having referred to D.H. Lawrence, I will not
                attempt to do so. In brief, I had a life-enhancing experience.

                   A few hours later, I bumped into Christey on his way to breakfast. “I couldn’t
                sleep most of last night,” he declared. “What the hell were you doing?” That felt
                good! I had no answer.

                   The usual festooned quay saw us depart Sydney with the usual style (named
                after their country’s capital, the ship seemed to mean something special to
                Australians and was always lavishly welcomed in its ports, unlike Oriana, merely
                a celebratory name for Queen Elizabeth I). I would rather have stayed in the
                port for a few more lascivious days, but it was not to be, for we were bound
                for Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, a port somewhat off the beaten track, but
                selected for Canberra because the ship’s draught was a bit too much for Suva.
                Tonga is not exactly a well-known country, but it had two claims to fame. The first
                was that at the coronation of Elizabeth II one of the more colourful celebrities
                was Queen Salote, a dramatic and distinguished woman who in 1953 took her
                one trip to Europe to attend the coronation, and gained great admiration from
                Londoners when she rode in an open carriage to and from Westminster Abbey
                in the pouring rain, deigning to utilise the hood that was provided because a
                queen should not copy what one’s onlookers were doing. The second claim to
                fame was that the country loved rugby, the sport that they play in Heaven, and
                because Fijians were habitually very large men and surprisingly agile, that tiny
                nation could produce a team that could play on equal terms with the rugby
                giants, Australia and New Zealand. I would have liked to indulge in a tour here,
                as I had earlier in Suva, but this not being a cruise and my now being too senior,
                I just had a walk around town; rather charming, but I would have liked a better
                introduction to such an unusual place.

                   One tends to think of the Pacific Ocean as vast and uninhabited, but it is in
                fact a most interesting part of the world to traverse, there being all sorts of very
                low-lying islands and atolls that can be a real danger to navigation, and only an
                occasional volcanic outcropping (the Hawaiian Islands, for instance) disturbs the
                tranquillity of the scene. (Not that ‘pacific’ was necessarily a good word to describe
                this ocean, for both to the north and south of the equator one can encounter
                ferocious storms. Fortunately, we did not). And, of course, to Honolulu we were
                bound. But there, a longer walk around town than I had earlier enjoyed did not
                charm me any more than had my previous visit.

                   Although the run down the West coast of Canada and the US was accomplished
                much as expected (though this time without visiting Seattle) in Los Angeles we
                ran into a spot of bother that demonstrated another minor issue with Canberra.
                In the normal course of events, Los Angeles was easy enough to enter and exit. But
                on this particular occasion we arrived in the middle of a tug strike, and although


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