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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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